











A 






' > 

e-» 


. % 




9 



(PHE @IRL IN CHECKS: 


^ OR, 

THE MYSTERY OF THE 

MOUNTAIN CABIN. 


r 


y— 

BY REV. j!'' w; DANIEL. 


OF COI^qZ 
s^^^COPYRlGHr ^ 

OCT 4 1890 








•^^shingto 


Printed for the Author. 
Publishing House op the M. E. Church, South. 
J. D. Barbee, Agenti, Nashville, Tenn, 
J890. 



r 


Entered, according to xVct of Congress, in the year i890. 
By J. W. Daniel, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasliington. 



TO 

my A^ed Father and mother, 

TO WHOM, UNDER DIVINE GRACE, I OWE EVERY THING, 

AND TO 

my Beloved GUiie and Childiten, 

THE JOY OF MY LIFE, 

1 Lovingly Dedicate This Volume, 

Author. 

( 3 ) 

i 

\ 









isroTi<2i;. 

The scenes and thoughts recorded on these pages 
have struggled within me for utterance. I have given 
them to whosoever shall read this volume. I believe 
they will stimulate thought on the part of the reader, 
and prove suggestive to every earnest heart. 

I have no apology to make for any thing within these 
pages. The scenes, anecdotes, and incidents have been 
drawn from real life ; many of them are true. I am 
free to say the book contains more “ truth than poetry,” 
no matter how poorly expressed. Author. 

( 5 ) 






Chapter I. pagk 

Royliood’s Vision Realized 0 

Chapter II. 

Tlie Ratifying Reception ' 20 

Chapter III. 

Revealing Some Perplexing Mysteries 30 

Chapter IV. 

Wherein Are Recorded Some Amusing Experiences, 
and Closing with a Tragedy 43 

ClIAmER V. 

Flat Rock Church and the Congregation 57 

Chapter VI. 

Eugene Dudevant G4 

Chapter VII. 

Burial of Eugene Dudevant, and a Look into the 
Old Homestead 72 

Chapter VIII. 

A Visit into the Region Beyond 83 

Chapter IX. 

The Find on the Lonely Mountain-side 100 

Chapter X. 

Randal Fox, Who Had No Love for War 100 

( 7 ) 


8 


Contents. 


Chapter XI. page 

The Arrest 116 

Chapter XII. 

Sam Houston’s Wife’s Journey to a Living Tomb, 
and Her Death 128 

Chapter XIII. 

How ’Cinda Retained Her Name. 135 

Chapter XIV. 

The Distillery, and Death of Randal Fox 140 

Chapter XV. 

The Grave on the Lonely Mountain-side 147 

Chapter XVI. 

The Veil Lifted from the Mountain Cabin 158 

Chapter XVH. 

The Advent into the World 171 

Chapter XVIH. 

A Widow Driven from Home 176 

Chapter XIX. 

A Backwoods Divine on Baptism 184 

Chapter XX. 

A New-fashioned Shirt, and a Deer-chase 196 

Chapter XXI. 

A Camp-hunt and How It Terminated 202 


THE GIRL W eHEGKS. 


®HAPT£fS I. 


BOYHOOD’S VISION REALIZED. 

LUE jeans and cottonade checks, as arti- 



I J cles of apparel, are as inseparably con- 
nected with the people inhabiting the mount- 
ain-ranges of Upper Carolina as the provin- 
cialisms of their “cracker” dialect. Indeed, 
there seems to be an “eternal fitness” exist- 
ing between the mountaineer and his toilet. 
He appears as much out of place clad in broad- 
cloth or other fabrics as a woman in the pulpit. 
Four things, from some cause, have been 
indissolubly joined together: home-raised to- 
bacco, clay pipes, blue jeans, and the mount- 
aineer. 

In early boyhood I have stood many a time 
in the long, old-fashioned piazza of the old 


( 9 ) 


10 


The Gh'l in Checks. 


mansion at the homestead in Laurens County, 
and watched, with a great deal of childish in- 
terest and with no small degree of curiosity, 
the long trains of covered wagons pass along 
the public highway leading from the mount- 
ains via Greenville, S. C., which was then a 
small town, to Augusta, Ga., which in those 
days was the great emporium of the mountain 
trade of Western North and South Carolina. 
The sturdy mountaineer hauled the scant prod- 
uce of his farm, chiefly apples and chestnuts, 
across the vast stretch of intervening country, 
and there exchanged it for those commodities 
which he could not otherwise j)rocure. 

The wagons, in companies of eight or ten, 
were generally drawn by either four or six 
mules; and very frequently there was attached 
to the top of the hames a frame containing a 
number of tiny bells, which kept .up a contin- 
uous jingle as the teams moved along the high- 
way. The wagons were covered with great 
white sheets of Osnaburgs stretched over a 
wooden bow-frame. Feed-troughs were at- 
tached to the rear gates of the great curved 


Boyhood ’s Vision Realized. 11 

bodies, and were, while moving, the receptacle 
of the cooking utensils, which kept up a per- 
fect medley of any thing but harmonious 
sounds as the great wagons jolted over the 
rough roads. A large wooden tar-bucket was 
suspended from the center of the rear axle, 
and frequently a savage-looking dog trot- 
ted along under the wagon-bed, having been 
trained to move and stop with the vehicle. 
The driver kept his place in the saddle day 
after day, and the swaying motion of his body 
diagonally from side to side corresponded pre- 
cisely with the strides of the draught beast 
upon which he sat. The loud crack of his 
whip sounded like the report of a rifle, and to 
me it was always the signal of an approaching 
train. Therefore mountain wagons and cos- 
tumes, together with the odor of mellow ap- 
ples, tar, and home-raised tobacco smoke, were 
indelibly stamped on memory’s page. 

I frequently dreamed of orchards hanging 
with great red apples, of mountains a great 
deal higher than the steep hills down by the 
ravine, and of many things, indeed, which my 


12 


The Girl in Checks. 


childish imagination associated with the re- 
gion from which these mountaineers came. 
So that in January, 1880, as my faithful 
horse climbed the steep acclivities of the 
mountain spurs of Upper South Carolina, not- 
withstanding it had been a long time since my 
eyes and nostrils had come into contact with 
the things mentioned in the first part of this 
paragraph, I as readily recognized them as if 
they had been the faces of familiar friends. 
But these familiars were destined soon to be 
associated with scenes and mysteries altogeth- 
er new and thoroughly perplexing to me. 

Tom Thaxton’s name was on the plan of my 
circuit. He was one of the stewards of Flat 
Eock Church. He lived somewhere in the 
vicinity of the far-famed Table Eock. The 
bleak perpendicular sides of that stupendous 
mass of granite had already greeted my view 
for several hours, and now I clambered along 
almost at its very base. I knew by my proxim- 
ity to this wonderful freak of nature that I was 
nearing my journey’s end, for Tom Thaxton’s 
home was my destination. ** Will you be kind 


Boyhood's Vision Bealized. 13 

enough to direct me to the home of Mr. Thax- 
ton?^’ I said to a tall, cadaverous-looking man 
whom I chanced to meet in the highway. 

Bringing the breech of his old-fashioned 
rifle to the ground with a thumj) that made 
the ramrod quiver and rattle in its receiver as 
if it had been subjected to an electric shock, 
and pushing his slouch woolen hat far back on 
his head, he replied: “Beant you one of them 
revenue fellows? 

Having assured him that I was not, I again 
sought the desired information. But my in- 
quiry was again met by a reply that in nowise 
pertained to the matter in hand. 

“Stranger, have yer got any good tobacco? 
I hai^’t seed a chaw that’s fitten to ruminate 
since the baptizin’ down at ’Possum Creek las’ 
summer. Col. Goodman was down thar too, 
an’, bein’ a can’idate for the legislatur’, he 
passed around some as good as I ever shut 
down on; an’ he went thar too, you better be- 
lieve it, old hoss; it were that tobacco that 
’lected the kernel as shoar as you are a born 
stranger to these parts. Say, fureigner, you 


14 


The Girl in Checks. 


han’t hearn how the kernel is gettin’ on fight- 
in’ that stock law, have you?” 

Seizing an opportunity just here, I gave my 
loquacious friend a piece of chewing-tobacco, 
hoping thereby to turn the current of his con- 
versation into the desired channel. 

“Manufac, shear’s I’m a livin’ man,” ex- 
claimed the mountaineer. “ Say, new-comer, 
you han’t runnin’ fur no office, are you? That 
manufac would ’lect a man to the Senate shear’s 
you are a born son of your daddy.” 

He rolled the quid from side to side of his 
large mouth, shifted his gun to the other side, 
pushed his slouch hat still farther back on his 
shaggy head, and continued : “ You chaw man- 
ufac an’ wear store clothes an’ say you an’t one 
of them revenue fellows, nor han’t runnin’ for 
no office nuther; you mysterfies a body. Would 
you mind tollin’ where you come from an’ 
what’s your business in these parts?” 

Of course I gave the honest inquirer the de- 
sired information, emphasizing my special 
business at that moment — viz., to find the way 
to Tom Thaxton’s house. 


15 


BoyhoocVs Vision Realized. 

“Well, you han’t fur from Tom Thaxton’s 
now; lie lives right on this road, an’ about two 
miles frum this p’int. Tom’s a mighty good 
nabor, an’ thar an’t but one thing that can be 
said agin him, an’ that is he han’t got right 
an’ proper views an’ idees concernin’ the 
Scriptur’. I’m a preacher of the gospel my- 
self, but I han’t the man to fall out with a fel- 
low ’cause he can’t see as I see, specially with 
a fellow what chaws manufac. Good-by, circu- 
ous-rider. But hold on; would you mind givin’ 
a fellow-laborer a few chaws of that manufac 
to take along to my app’intment Sunday? Our 
crap of tobacco was mighty no ’count las’ year.” 

I gave his reverence the desired boon, and 
hastened up the mountain-side, determined in 
my heart to ask no one else the way to Tom 
Thaxton’s house until I had exhausted every 
other effort to find the place of my destination. 
I had gone but a little distance when the narrow 
road began its tortuous descent into a broad, 
beautiful valley. Through this valley one 
branch of the prattling Saluda swept its way, 
its waters struggling apparently to get out 


16 


The Girl in Checks. 


from under the shadow of the great granite 
cliffs that towered heavenward on every side. 
On the west the valley was bounded by Table 
Rock Mountain. The north-east side was shut 
in by a long range of broken, craggy mount- 
ains, spurs of the great Blue Ridge. The 
northern end of the valley seemed to gradually 
lose itself among the far-away blue mount- 
ains, that arose pile upon pile until they 
seemed to jut against the sky itself. South- 
ward there were quite a number of little 
mountains, oval - shaped, which dotted the 
widening expanse of country, and which, from 
their shape, might have been very appropri- 
ately christened the ‘‘Potato-hills of the Gi- 
ants.” The valley thus shut in was dotted 
here and there with crude dwelling-houses, 
which resembled, from the eminence upon 
which I stood, so many chicken coops in a 
bam-yard with miniature chimneys attached 
thereto. 

Passing down into this secluded valley, there 
came over me a feeling of isolation and lone- 
liness — 


Boyhood'* s Vision Realized. 17 

So lonely ’twas, that God himself . 

Scarce seemed there to be. 

Looking back over the ‘‘Potato-hills of the 
Giants,” which shut me in from the broad, un- 
dulatory plains of my former days, a heavy 
shadow came over my soul, for they seemed to 
rise up, fixed, impassable barriers between me 
and the old home of my boyhood days. So 
repulsive was the impression that I looked not 
again behind me. 

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turned round, walks on 
And turns no more his head. 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread. 

The granite hills of Table Eock to my left 
looked down on me defiantly. The towering, 
rock-ribbed hills to my right and in front 
seemed to whisper triumphantly: “Hitherto 
shalt thou come, and no farther.” 

Header, hast thou ever descended alone the 
precipitous declivities of some towering mount- 
ain into the isolated vale beneath, while the 
2 


18 


The Girl in Checks, 


thoughts of loved ones miles away filled thy 
heart? Hast thou ever experienced that de- 
pressed feeling of isolation that creeps over 
the soul amid the death-like silence that per- 
vades the coves and glens of these “ everlast- 
ing hills,” and produce that acute and inde- 
scribable sense of loneliness? Hast thou, like 
the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” ever been alone 
in the vale? 

Alone! that worn-out word, 

So idly and so coldly heard ; 

Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known, 

Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word, alone. 

Such were my impressions as I began the de- 
scent into the valley. I intuitively christened 
it the “Yale of Loneliness and Seclusion.” 
Crossing this secluded vale in a north-west- 
erly direction, I again came to the foot of the 
mountains, and began the winding ascent. 
The hitherto painful silence was now broken, 
for just where the road began its upward 
course a small creek leaped over the rocks, 
making a perpendicular descent of fifty feet or 
more, forming a most beautiful cataract, and 


Boyhood's Vision Realized, 19 

dispelling by its gushing music the awful, all- 
pervading silence of the valley. I had climbed 
the mountain for only a short distance, how- 
ever, when I came suddenly upon a cabin by 
the road-side. Conjecturing that it was the 
home of Tom Thaxton, I reined up my horse 
in front of the gate of the low rail fence that 
encircled the humble dwelling. The furious 
barking of a huge mastiff brought the house- 
wife to the door. I saluted her, and was on 
the eve of inquiring as to whether or not I 
was right in my conjecture, when she relieved 
me of that task in rather an abrupt manner. 
I was, indeed, correct in my anticipations. 
This was the home of Tom Thaxton. The 
first utterance that fell from the lips of my 
prospective hostess proved it beyond a shadow 
of doubt. 


©HAPTEl^ II. 


THE RATIFYING RECEPTION. 

TOM! come to the house; ihQ new preach- 
er has come.” 

This sentence was uttered by my hostess as 
she stood in the door-way of her cabin home. 
The shrill notes greeted the ears of the plain, 
backwoods husband, who was engaged in dis- 
tributing shucks, a hundred yards away, to 
the cattle that had gathered into the small 
barn-yard, impatiently clamoring for their 
evening meal. 

The introduction which I thus received 
was queer enough, it is true, but then it was 
to the point. So much cannot be said of all 
introductions. There was no uncertain sound 
about it. 

“The new preacher has come!” What an 
apt guesser! Could there be any thing cler- 
ical in my appearance ? Surely not. But there 
was evidently something upon which she based 
( 20 ) 


The Ratifying Reception. 21 

her conjecture. Perhaps it was because I 
wore “ store clothes f as my reverend “ Hardshell 
brother ” had already informed me. 

Such were my thoughts as I alighted from 
the tired steed that had borne me so faithfully 
along the precipitous roads of that mountain- 
ous section to this, the lowly home of one of 
my parishioners. 

“ The new preacher! ” His coming was ev- 
idently an event in the monotonous history of 
that secluded home. But how the words rung 
in my ears! They startled and paralyzed, for 
the moment, every energy of my soul. How 
new indeed I was in the exercise of the func- 
tions of that sacred office had never before 
sunk so impressively into my heart. Never 
before had the sacred solemnities and weighty 
responsibilities of this divinely instituted of- 
fice come upon me with such crushing force. 
To feed the flock of God and to seek the lost 
amid such mountain wilds, and in such homes 
as the one at whose gate I now stood, involved 
experience and demanded energy, zeal, and 
devotion. I felt keenly the lack of the former. 


22 


The Girl in Checks, 


and entirely incapable of exercising the latter 
traits to that degree which would insure suc- 
cess. Indeed, the toils and transcendent solic- 
itude of the Chief Shepherd, as portrayed in 
the parable of the lost sheep, loomed up be- 
fore me in a light never before realized. For 
five years preceding this event I had been 
locked up in the cloisters of a literary college, 
going daily through the routine work of a stu- 
dent’s life, preparing, as I thought, for the life 
of a common barrister. But God in his ten- 
derness and wonderful condescension had laid 
his hand upon me, and I had unhesitatingly 
yielded myself up to him. 

J ust two months previous to the event about 
which I am writing I had received license as 
a local preacher; and just two weeks prior to 
the afternoon of which I have spoken I was 
received as “an applicant for admission on 
trial” into the South Carolina Conference, and 
now I stand before Tom Thaxton’s gate the 
anxiously-looked-for new preacher.'*' Where 
will these transpositions end? 

But this spell was broken by the presence 


The Ratifying Reception. 23 

of Tom Thaxton. He was competent, as we 
shall see, to break any spell; for he was truly 
an original character, unlike all other “Toms,” 
and as to that unlike all other men. He was 
clad in the inevitable blue jeans homespun, 
with an ample supply of corn-silks and bits of 
shucks adhering to his tall, angular form, 
bearing intelligence, at least to my faithful 
horse, that his most pressing wants would be 
speedily satisfied. For as gentle “ Bill ” looked 
upon these badges of what the barn contained 
they became to him an earnest of his night’s 
lodging; hence he greeted the approach of my 
plain host with a friendly, obsequious neigh. 
He seemed over- willing to give himself into 
the hands of this stranger, his instinct teach- 
ing him that he would fare sumptuously. In- 
deed, so marked were his demonstrations that 
I almost became provoked at his obsequious- 
ness. But nature is always true to itself. The 
marked deference which my horse paid to this 
stranger is in hearty accord with a spirit fre- 
quently observable in man. He doubtless 
thought that warm and comfortable quarters 


24 


The Girl in Checks. 


were at stake. When a soft hed and downy pil- 
lows are the probable reward, man himself is 
no exception to such obsequiousness. As de- 
testable as a favor-courting spirit may appear, 
that certain benefits may be received, or that 
certain apprehended dangers may be obviated, 
those persons who do not practice more or 
less such demeanors are the very rare excep- 
tions. 

But such verbosity! What a dialect! Had 
a few of my old college chums been there, how 
they would have heaved with laughter! With- 
out the least ceremony my host began in this 
strain: “We know’d you’d be here. Betsy 
was a-sayin’ this mornin’ that she know’d, in 
reason, that you’d be here, beca’se to-morrow is 
your reg’lar day, in course, out at the Flat, 
and the preachers always stop here. But what 
might be your name? We han’t hearn who’s 
app’inted to our side. Lou’s gone fur the pa- 
per now. Betsy was a-sayin’ las’ night that 
she would bet ten pumpkins when the app’int- 
ments come we’d get somebody we didn’t know 
nothin* about. But Betsy will lose her bet 


The Ratifying Reception. 25 

for once in her life, for you’ve outtraveled the 
app’intments, an’ she’ll have to eat her word, 
shoar, fur we’ll I’arn somethin’ ’bout you ’fore 
Lou comes with the Advocated 

Just here I seized an opportunity to make 
known' my name, as my host paused to get 
breath. 

“Sakes alive! I didn’t know anybody was 
named that these days. But the elder ’lowed 
in his sarmon over at the ’las quarterly meet- 
ing that history was always repeatin’ itself; 
but we didn’t think he was a-goin’ to repeat 
history on us so soon. Well, Brother Daniel, 
you han’t quite got into the lion’s den, but you 
han’t fur from it, for we uns are mighty poor 
people on this circuit; but then we uns are pow- 
erful friendly. An’ it thess this minnit popped 
into my head, Dave Lyon lives over on Oolenoi, 
an’ Dave’s a Baptist, an’ he dearly loves to ar- 
gufy, an’ if you should drop in some time to 
see Dave, you’ll be in the Lyon’s den as shoar 
as you are the new preacher. See here! Come, 
go in to the fire an’ make yourself at home, for 
I know you mus’ be cold. I’ll ’tend to your 


26 


The Girl in Checks. 


creeter. Betsy! O Betsy! don’t let Bing bite 
the little preacher.” 

What a welcome pause! for he had certainly 
given me enough to tax to their utmost capac- 
ity my digestive functions for a few moments 
at least. 

‘‘Poor, but friendly!” What itinerant 
preacher has not lived long enough to appre- 
ciate friendliness^ even when mixed with x^ov- 
erty? What itinerant preacher has not some- 
times groaned, “being burdened,” because — 
situated as he was even among wealthy and 
independent parishioners — friendship, the 
kind that takes hold of the itinerant’s heart, 
had apparently departed? What itinerant has 
not rejoiced at the presence of this silver- 
winged comforter, even in the homes of the 
lowliest? “Poor, but friendly,” inestimable 
and precious kind of poverty! May it be mul- 
tiplied! 

As my host led my horse away toward the 
barn Betsy Thaxton came into the yard and 
grasped a chain, to one end of which was at- 
tached a huge block of wood and to the other 


The Ratifying Reception. 27 

a raging brindled dog, the only being that dis- 
puted my right of way to the house, and the 
only tmfriendly thing that greeted my ap- 
proach to the dwelling of this simple-hearted 
“ child of a King.” And as I kept practically 
in view the scriptural injunction, “Beware of 
dogs,” by giving a wide berth to the savage- 
looking beast, there also flashed through my 
mind the experiences of the last fifteen min- 
utes. My host had made free with my name 
by alluding to its historic associations; and, 
not content with that, had most unmercifully 
referred to my littleness of stature as though 
these things were under my control. I had 
been unfortunate in this respect at college. 
If I happened to scratch my forehead with the 
spiral of a shirt stud, in adjusting that gar- 
ment on a cold morning, the accident only 
served to bring me a pet name, “ Scratch-fore- 
head,” varied, when the labors preparatory to 
examination claimed my most diligent atten- 
tion, to “Scratch forward,” and at last to 
the by no means euphonious cognomen of 
“Scratch,” for short. 


28 


The Girl in Checks. 


When I published in a newspaper the first 
production of my humble pen, little “ prepar- 
atory imps” cried through college hall and 
over college campus: “O Temporal the prophet 
has turned novelist, and the lions have lost a 
meal.” So things moved for five years; but 
now I expected these frivolities to cease. But 
not so, alas! And I have long since learned 
that human nature is ever the same the world 
over. The polished gentleman, the mischiev- 
ous school-boy, and the untoward backwoods- 
man each appreciates and has his own way of 
appropriating and manufacturing the ridicu- 
lous. These puns and efforts at wit, with the 
unlearned especially, are evidences, though 
not always so received, of a warm affection, on 
the part of the originator, for the one so vic- 
timized. I have long since learned to love the 
soul that knows how to launch forth puns 
and jests. They are food for the weary mind, 
and refreshing draughts to the overburdened 
heart. 

Having stood the ordeal, therefore, of my 
host’s witticisms, and having also, through the 


29 


The Ratifying Reception. 

assistance of my hostess, passed the^ only 
friendly object — the ferocious Ring — I entered 
for the first time the door of Tom Thaxton’s 
mountain cabin. 

The revelations of that mysterious home are 
reserved for the next chapter. 


©HAF’T'e^ in* 


REVEALING SOME PERPLEXING MYSTERIES. 

“0 O dear I loved the man,” that I must say, 
hJ “ I took him for the plainest harmless creature 
That breathed upon the earth a Christian ; 

Made him my book,” 

and learned from him much that has profited 
and encouraged me. But, like all thoughtful 
books, he was difiicult to read as I would have 
read him. Tom Thaxton was indeed original, 
suggestive, and amusing. But, best of all, he ^ 
was orthodox to the core, practically and the- 
oretically. 

Such was my estimate of him when I learned 
him. He was well matched; for so soon as 
I sat down before the blazing log-heap that 
crackled cheerily in the broad fire-place I 
learned that Betsy Thaxton knew how to ask 
questions and make comments. As she went 
about preparing the evening meal at the fire 
by which I sat she learned from me the ap- 
( 30 ) 


Revealing Some Perplexing Mysteries, 31 

pointments of all the ministers with whom she 
had been associated in former years. She 
talked much of their virtues and idiosyncra- 
sies, and then, by a well-framed cross-exam- 
ination, she seemed determined to ascertain 
all that it was proper to know concerning the 
person of the new preacJiery winding up, as she 
placed the last dish upon the table, with the 
very personal declaration: “My child, you’ve 
got a heap to learn.” 

Just as my hostess reached that important 
climax my host entered the house, having 
completed the chores, and we drew our chairs 
around the table preparatory to taking our 
evening meal. Of course L knew that all or- 
thodox Methodists began their meals by in- 
voking God’s blessing, but I confess no little 
mental confusion when my host bid me “ make 
a beginning ''' and had not he and his devoted 
wife reverently bowed their heads I am afraid 
that I would not have grasped the meaning of 
that utterance. My appetite was keen enough, 
after the long day’s ride, but I soon discov- 
ered that I would be compelled to satisfy it by 


32 


The Girl in Checks, 


eating between times. Much of my time was 
consumed by answering questions from both 
sides of the house. However, when the meal 
was concluded and the time came to return 
thanks, I was readier to catch the meaning of 
my host when he asked me to ^^make an ending. 

Such decorum may seem strange to those 
who have been reared amid the refining influ- 
ences of cultivated society; but when we take 
into consideration the environments and iso- 
lating circumstances of thesp mountaineers, it 
is altogether excusable. They are separated 
from the outside world, and are literally hun- 
gry for news. At best, mails reach them but 
once a week, and to many even this privilege 
is denied. It is said that eager crowds run 
along for quite a distance after coaches on the 
frontier, asking the driver many questions rel- 
ative to occurrences in the States. Caesar in- 
forms us that the barbaric tribes of ancient 
Gaul were accustomed to gather around the 
traders who entered their territory and ask 
many questions relative to the outside world. 
These traders, we are informed, often invented 


Revealing Some Perplexing Mysteries, 33 

marvelous stories, and related them just to 
witness the great surprise and large wonder 
on the part of the interested listeners. 

What a wonderful economy is ours! It 
meets, and in a large measure satisfies, this 
natural propensity on the part of the most iso- 
lated member of the Church. Not only has 
every Methodist preacher the inestimable priv- 
ilege of imparting information to the most ig- 
norant backwoodsman, but our noble plan of 
pastoral and itinerant work enables each 
preacher to become thoroughly acquainted 
with the prominent characteristics of his field 
of labor, oftentimes before he is twenty-four 
hours on the work, thus becoming a hooh for 
the people, and at the same time studying 
them as his hooh. 

Such, indeed, was the memorable experience 
of my first night at Tom Thaxton’s. When he 
had exhausted his ample store of questions, he 
turned informer. All the peculiar Church 
characters in the community were painted in 
his homely way, and stood before me, soon to 
be met, as I afterward realized, as real living 
3 


34 


The Girl in Checks. 


beings. The important news that I was in a 
“Hard-shell” community must not, of course, 
be withheld from me. 

“They won’t fellowship any of us. They 
don’t believe in book-lamin’, either, an’ it won’t 
be many days ’fore some of ’em’ll be a-cuttiu 
at you. You just ought to hear ’em preach. 
Their preachers are as thick as feathers on a 
duck’s back ’round here. Parson Pond duck 
had it ’nounced an’ norated that he was goin’ 
to preach a sarmon on the ’postolic mode of 
baptism las’ Sunday, an’ I rid over to hear him. 
His text was: ‘ Thus it becometh us to fulfill all 
righteousness.’ He didn’t tell us whar it was, 
but said it mout be found betwixt the lids of 
the Bible. ’Pears mighty strange that they 
won’t tell whar their text is. Betsy has been 
a-huntin’ for it. She don’t believe it’s inside 
the lids of the Bible, beca’se the parson 
wouldn’t tell whar it was; but I told her it 
sounded powerful like Scriptur’ to me. But 
the text and sarmon wa’n’t no kin.” 

“ Can you give me his exegesis of the text? ” 
I asked. 


Bevealiny Some Ferplexlny Mysteries. 35 

“ Sakes alive! There wa’n’t none in it. He 
didn t say a word ’bout them Greek words. 
But Brother Slater told us all ’bout them eks 
and ins, an all ’em Greek words when he 
preached on baptism for us down at the Flat. 
He splained ’em all so that they were power- 
ful dare to my mind. I tell you he was a mas- 
ter preacher. But Parson Pondduck didn’t 
touch on that line; an’ he didn’t say a word 
’bout circumcision, for he know’d all them 
things were ag’in’ him, an’ that he couldn’t 
crawl over them. ’Pears powerful strange to 
me that they can’t see nothin’ in water hut a 
grave, anyhow. He talked powerful ’fecting 
’bout the watery grave, an’ said nobody would 
ever go to heaven but them that went through 
that grave. He said that the watery grave was 
the narrow way that our Saviour spoke of, be- 
ca’se every man just made a hole to fit himself 
as he went down into the narrow stream. 
’Peared to me it was a shallow an’ sloppy way 
too. He ’lowed the Primitive Baptists were 
the few that entered therein. They would be 
saved beca’se ‘ Thus they fulfilled all righteous- 


36 


The Girl in Checks, 


ness.’ He said that sprinklin’ an’ pourin’ an’ 
all them highfalutin’ an’ do-as-you-please ways 
were the broad way that led down to destruc- 
tion. I tell you the members took on awfully, 
an’ I believe they thought it was the pure gos- 
pel. But that sarmon didn’t sound much like 
the Scriptur’ to me. As we come off from the 
church, I rid along with Deacon Jones, an’ sez 
I to him : ‘ Parson Pondduck didn’t nigh stick 
to his text to-day, ’cordin’ to my notion.’ He 
’lowed ’twas dare as the sun to him that Par- 
son Pondduck tracked the Scriptur’ from be- 
ginnin’ to eend. Sez I to him, sez I, ‘ It stands to 
reason, then, that everybody will be lost but you 
uns.’ He ’lowed, sez ee, to me, sez ee, that some 
mout be saved in furren countries, where they 
didn’t have the Scriptur’ to read, beca’se, sez 
ee, they were without the gospel, an’ the Lord 
might take pity on their ignorance an’ save 
them; but, sez ee, in this enlightened land 
where the Scriptur’ is expounded, that it was 
just as Parson Pondduck had said. Just then 
’Cinda Smith overtuck us. An’ ’Cinda is a 
Methodist from the crown of her head to the 


Bevealing Some Perplexing Mysteries. 37 

soles of her feet. It would a done you good 
just to hearn her jine in the argufication. Sez 
she, ‘ It stan’s to reason, then,’ sez she, ‘if Par- 
son Pondduck is right ’bout the ‘Hard-shell’ 
Baptists bein’ all that’s goin’ to be saved, that 
heaven would have to be rented out. An’,’ sez 
she, ‘ it’s ’cordin’ to Scriptur’, too, beca’se,’ sez 
she, ‘ I hearn Elder Simpkins prove outen the 
Bible down at the Cave when quarterly meetin’ 
was held there that heaven was a mighty big 
place.’ An’ she ’lowed, sez she, everybody 
that know’d any thing know’d there w^er’n’t 
many ‘Hard-shell’ Baptists in the world; ‘not 
enough,’ sez she, ‘ to fill one corner of heaven.’ 
She ’lowed there wer’n’t enough of them to 
keep the music a-goin’ an’ to tend to the purty 
flowers in the green fields of Eden. ‘An’,’ sez 
she, ‘ it stands to reason in my mind that un- 
less it’s rented out you uns will have a power- 
ful hard time a-doin’ all them things the Script- 
ur’ speaks of bein’ carried on there.’ You just 
ought to seed Deacon Jones bile over. He 
han’t said a word to me ’bout baptism since. 
Never mind, they’ll be out as thick as hail at 


38 


The Girl in Checks. 


the Flat to-morrow to hear you preach; that 
is, if it is a day fitten, and ” — 

I know not what my host would have said, 
for just then his sentence was broken by the 
entrance of a young lady, whom Tom Thaxton 
introduced as his daughter. 

The amusing experiences and theological 
controversies related by my host had already 
driven sleep away from my tired body. I had 
been* amused, bewildered, and mortified, and, 
I must say, instructed. Indeed, that such 
people as these, to whom the bishop had sent 
me, existed within the bounds of my native 
State was really stranger to me than fiction. 
That such theology (?) was taught in the nine- 
teenth century, and that, too, within the bounds 
of an enlightened and civilized country, was a 
truth that the schools had failed to teach me. 

But bewildered as I had been, bewilderment 
is scarcely an adequate term by which to ex- 
press the state of my mind as I stood confront- 
ing the maid who had just entered — Louise 
Thaxton. She was tall, graceful, queenly, just 
blooming into young womanhood. Her feat- 


Revealing Some Perplexing Mysteries, 39 

ures were delicate, and her facial expression 
was of the most intellectual cast. In a word, 
her rare physical beauty, her cultured deport- 
ment, and the evidence she gave of cultivation 
and refinement were in strange contrast with 
her surroundings. 

I looked up at the crude old family clock, 
and it was just nine. I had previously learned 
from my host that Louise Thaxton had been 
on her weekly errand to the nearest little town, 
nearly twenty miles away, for the purpose of 
getting the mail and procuring also whatever 
little articles the family was compelled to make 
use of, and which could not be manufactured 
at home. That long journey had been per- 
formed in the primitive style, on horseback. 
Since darkness had thrown its sable shadows 
over her pathway the road she traveled had 
led her through the dark valleys and over the 
towering crags of the lofty spurs of the Blue 
Bidge. The oppressive silence of that ride 
had been interrupted only by the melancholy 
sound of the rushing cataracts, the occasional 
scream of the owls and night-birds that in- 


40 


The Girl in Checks, 


fested the coves of that wild and lonesome re- 
gion, and perhaps the doleful liowl of the cat- 
amount as it sought its prey among the rugged 
cliffs. An untimely hour, to be sure, for the 
return of an unaccompanied and unprotected 
girl. I afterward learned, however, that such 
was the custom of the people of this isolated 
region, because the natural environments and 
surroundings of these hardy mountaineers 
have begotten in them an intrepidity worthy 
of the bravest. This bold, fearless spirit is 
common to both sexes. But these were les- 
sons learned long after that eventful night of 
which I am writing. And that an unprotected 
girl should have performed such a journey, 
and on her return unsaddled, stabled, and fed 
her steed, was to me simply marvelous. But 
what most perplexed me was the problem of 
the existence of one of such rare beauty, re- 
fined deportment, and cultured speech in such 
a home, one so crude and primitive as Tom 
Thaxton’s. How could it be that one reared 
by those who spoke the cracker dialect, and 
who was completely separated from refined 


Revealing Some Perplexing Mysteries. 41 

and polished society, should speak our lan- 
guage with the precision and elegance of a 
Macaulay, and at the same time exhibit the 
deportment of the most refined? 

As Louise Thaxton stood before me the very 
impersonation of an ideal beauty, clad in 
homespun cotton ades, while rough, home- 
made leather shoes incased her small, hand- 
somely shaped feet — a veritable mountain girl 
in dress and general attire — but in speech, 
carriage, and deportment a pure lily of the 
valley, I forgot the amusing experiences of the 
last few hours, and sat fixed to the chair, un- 
able to wrench my gaze from her enrapturing 
person. Tom Thaxton’s tongue, however, ran 
unceasingly on, but his words made little or 
no impression on me. Even our evening de- 
votions failed to banish from my mind for a 
moment the mysterious problem that had so 
unexpectedly confronted me. Even when as- 
signed to my little and scantily furnished 
chamber sleep was driven from me, while I 
lay pressed down into the great feather-bed 
by the bountiful supply of home-woven conn- 


42 


The Girl in Checks, 


terpanes and woolen blankets that Betsy Thax- 
ton had been so careful to place over the bed, 
that the cold winds of January, which howled 
through the cracks of my apartment, might not 
reach my tired body. My person was there- 
fore doubly protected from the cruel cold, but 
the mystery that enveloped one member of 
that isolated family drove sleep, sweet sleep, 
from my eyes, and tortured cruelly the inner 
man. 

O sleep ! O gentle sleep ! 

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness? 


i\i. 


WHEREIN ARE RECORDED SOME AMUSING EXPERI- 
ENCES, AND CLOSING'WITH A TRAGEDY. 

HE chamber which I occupied was located 



JL at one end of a little piazza. Those who 
have traveled in the mountains will recognize 
this very necessary appendage of a first-class 
mountain cabin. 

Early on the following morning I was 
aroused, having fallen asleep just before day, 
from this quiet retreat by a loud rap on the 
door of the little chamber, accompanied by the 
familiar voice of Tom Thaxton: “Git up; ive 
uns are ready for to eat.” 

I hastily adjusted my toilet. The sun’s rays 
were darting through the cracks of my room, 
bringing to me the intelligence that the winds 
had blown away the lowering clouds, and fur- 
thermore impressing me with the fact that it 
would be “a day according to Tom 

Thaxton’s cracker phraseology, for my strange 


( 48 ) 


44 


The Girl in Checks, 


auditors to turn out en masse. These precious 
rays, notwithstanding the Hard-shell ” audi- 
ence they might bring, came to me like the in- 
fluence and associations of a precious gift from 
a kind friend. God’s gifts are common to all 
men. No matter how far we may be separated 
from those we love, or what circumstances may 
surround us, God’s precious gifts are always 
present with us; we cannot be separated from 
them. God had caused the winds to sweep 
away the clouds. O that a- like dispensation 
of an omniscient Father would lift the clouds 
of mystery that have involuntarily overshad- 
owed my mind! 

Such were my meditations as I kneeled by 
the side of my bed and poured out my soul in 
thanksgiving and adoration for the blessings 
and loving-kindness of a gracious Father. 

When I had finished my devotions, and be- 
gan to search for a basin in which to bathe 
my burning eyes, alas! there was none. Such 
neglect was unpardonable. I was almost vexed. 
But “while in Borne we must do as Borne 
does.” I was, however, soon relieved from 


Some Amusing Experiences, 45 

this embarrassing situation by the re-appear- 
ance of my liost, who rapped upon the door 
and said: “When you get ready to wash your 
face an’ ban’s, just come out to the spout.” I 
stepped out into the little piazza, and thence 
followed my host into the narrow yard back of 
his dwelling. The scene that was there opened 
up to me Avas truly enrapturing. The mount- 
ain, on the side of which the house was located, 
rose sublimely perpendicular, almost, from 
the very underpinning of the dwelling. In- 
deed, the sides of the mountain had been dug 
away so as to make level the site of the little 
log cabin. The rays of the early morning’s 
sun flashed upon the hugh masses of dripping 
rock; thence they were reflected, causing these 
immense piles of granite to resemble enormous 
bowlders of pure glass. Away up the mount- 
ain-side a little stream leaped over the per- 
pendicular rocks, forming a most beautiful 
cascade. The streamlet lined the rugged 
mountain-side like a thread of silver, contin- 
ually rushing doAvn, down toward the dark val- 
ley beneath us. Now it is lost behind the stu- 


46 


The Girl in Checks. 


peiidous piles of earth and rock; again it darts 
forth like a ray of light, leaping out of the 
earth itself. Nearer and yet nearer it ap- 
proaches, forming all along its pathway num- 
bers of little cascades transcendently beauti- 
ful, but less imposing than the larger one 
higher up the mountain. On and on it came 
until its pellucid waters, fresh from the heart 
of the mountain, poured through a wooden 
spout and fell in a crystal stream at our feet. 
In that beautiful stream of pure water, fresh 
from the reservoirs of the “everlasting hills,” 
I bathed on that beautiful Sunday morning in 
January, 1880. Little did I then dream that 
at some future day, as I should wander along 
the banks of that little rill, tracing it up the 
steep mountain-side, there would suddenly 
burst upon me the full revelation of the 
“mystery of the mountain cabin,” yet such 
was the case. 

Enraptured .by the handiwork of Him who 
“marshals the hosts of heaven and thunders 
forth in the artillery of the clouds,” who once. 
Himself, tabernacled on Sinai’s summit, and 


Some Amitshuj Experiences. 47 

fringed the cloud-curtains of His pavilion with 
the forked lightning, I made my first effort at 
pastoral conversation. I was the child and 
humble ambassador of the great First Cause 
of this, His magnificent handiwork. Must I 
not speak of His “ tender mercies and loving- 
kindnesses? ” The effort was difficult, yet in 
some measure, at least, it was accomplished. 

“How thankful,” I said, “Brother Thaxton, 
we should be for the inestimable blessings our 
Father bestows! upon us and yet we often pass 
them by unnoticed. We have, this morning, 
an unclouded sky, and a bright, beautiful Sab- 
bath. It seems that God has made special 
provisions for his children to-day, not only giv- 
ing them a beautiful day in which to attend 
upon his worship, but so far as we are con- 
cerned, at least, he has crowned us with health 
of body and peace of mind. I hope you enjoy 
religion and cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving. 
Brother Thaxton.” 

Such was my first effort at speaking, pri- 
vately, a word for my Master’s cause; and I 
shall never forget what a trial my risibilities 


48 


The Girl in Checks. 


sustained when I turned away from the spout 
and confronted my host. 

There he stood, the very impersonation of 
surprise. The long, coarse towel, with which 
I was to dry my face, was thrown across his 
shoulder, his hands were thrust deep into the 
pockets of his trousers, his eyes were dilated, 
and his lips were slightly parted with large 
wonder; and as I reached forth and drew the 
towel from his shoulder he began his reply: 
“Sakes alive! I thought you were a-preach- 
in’ ; why, you didn’t think I an’t got religion, 
did you? Yes, sir, I come through just twen- 
ty-two years ago, if I’m spared to see the 16th 
day of July cornin’. I come through just 
about sundown at Bald Knob Camp-meetin’. 
I tell you what! preachers could preach in 
them days. They knowed the Scriptur’ same 
as I know my name. I wa’n’t a member of the 
Church then, an’ as I had laid by my crap, an’ 
had nothin’ to do, think’s I, I’ll go down to the 
meetin’ mostly for to see an’ be seed. But, I 
tell you, I soon seed I was lost accordin’ to 
what the Scriptur’ said, an’ somehow or some- 


49 


Some Amusing Experiences, 

how else I felt powerful pestered. I don’t think 
I ever sperienced such botherment in my life, 
beca’se I knowed I hadn’t been a-livin’ right. 
So I just hauled down my colors, an’ give right 
up, beca’se I seed ’twa’n’t no use to fight ag’in’ 
the Almighty. An’ I han’t made no spirits 
since, nor drunk none nuther; an’ it’s kept me 
out’n a sight o’ trouble, too, as shear’s Betsy’s 
my partner for life. ’Tan’t no news to me that 
I had ought to be thankful, as you say, for 
don’t the Scriptur’ say: ‘The way of the 
transgressor is hard? ’ ” 

I do not know what practical application 
this rough, though pure-hearted mountaineer, 
w^ould have made of this scriptural quotation; 
for just as he uttered it we heard the clatter of 
horses’ feet rapidly descending the mountain. 
Anon there swept by the humble dwelling a 
company of United States revenue officials, 
bearing along with them two men, who were 
evidently citizens. 

My host shaded his eyes with his hand to 
protect them from the dazzling rays of the 
sun, as he looked after the flying horsemen, 
4 


50 


The Girl in Checks. 


and continued: “Yes, ’tan’t no use in trying 
to get ’round Scriptur’. ‘ The way of the trans- 
gressor is hard.’ There goes Billy Jones and 
Mike Green, an’ I tole the boys no longer’n 
night afore las’ that ’em fellers would make a 
raid on ’em. Poor boys, I feel sorry for ’em, 
but ’tan’t no use a-bein’ sorry for folks that 
won’t have no pity on theirselves, an’ won’t 
take no advice.” 

There was a vein pf practical philosophy in 
this ignorant man’s observations. But most 
of all I could not doubt the genuineness of his 
conversion, and the thoroughness of his Chris- 
tianity. He was evidently a big-hearted, whole- 
souled Christian man, but his generosity must 
be shown in his own crude way. And such 
characters are indeed the world’s greatest ben- 
efactors. He was one of that class of individ- 
uals we occasionally meet who never tire of talk- 
ing, and who have the rare facility of passing 
from one subject to another without any break 
whatever in the conversation. We always list- 
en to such men, whether they are men of at- 
tainments or otherwise. Providence seems to 


51 


Some Amusing Experiences, 

favor them by always evolving for them just 
the incidents and occurrences suited to their 
linguistic talents. While others are thinking 
what to say, their tongues run unceasingly on, 
and they have the rare facility of appropri- 
ating whatever comes along. I cannot even 
guess where this good man’s experiences and 
observations would have ended. He had got- 
ten from his conversion at Bald Knob Camp- 
ground to illicit whisky-making, and was rap- 
idly moving on toward the United States 
prison, when my hostess summarily broke the 
line of conversation by announcing breakfast. 

I sat opposite Louise at the breakfast-table, 
hence I had a better opportunity of studying 
her physiognomy. There was not the slight- 
est resemblance in her facial features to either 
Tom or Betsy Thaxton. Neither was there an 
utterance of her tongue which bordered on the 
provincialisms and the cracker dialect of the 
other two inmates of that home. This vivid 
contrast caused me to break through all con- 
ventionalities in the fruitless endeavor to as- 
certain the cause of this marked difference 


52 


The Girl in Checks, 


between the parents and the child. I there- 
fore unceremoniously asked: “Where were 
you educated, Miss Louise? ” 

She blushingly met my gaze, and replied 
with becoming diffidence: “I have never been 
so fortunate, sir. We are destitute of schools 
here. My mother, however, taught me to read, 
and instructed me in the rudiments of our 
language.” 

Alas! my first question elicited an answer 
that thrilled my being with another problem, 
while it brought forth no light relative to the 
one I desired to solve. Could it be that Tom 
Thaxton had been twice married? One thing, 
however, was evident: Betsy Thaxton was not 
the mother of Louise. But what course must 
I adopt? Shall I violate the law of propriety, 
to say the least, and interrogate the inmates of 
this mysterious home about matters that in no- 
wise concern me? Surely I could not so far 
forget every sense of propriety. Hence I de- 
termined to change my tactics. My very in- 
stinct, as it were, taught me that honest Tom 
Thaxton had no secrets. I determined, there- 


Some Amusing Experiences. 53 

fore, not to educe the knowledge which I so 
much desired from him by questioning him 
directly about his own private family matters. 
I resolved to cultivate the grace of patience, 
and to adroitly turn, from time to time, Tom 
Thaxton s conversation into certain channels, 
knowing that these plain mountaineers talk 
almost exclusively of what they have at some 
time observed or experienced. In a word, I 
concluded to let him do that work which he 
was so willing to perform, and for which nat- 
ure had so admirably fitted him — talk about 
every thing he had seen, heard, or felt — hop- 
ing that by so doing he would let fall some 
clew to the mystery in his own household. I 
therefore addressed him relative to the party 
of United States officials that had just passed 
his dwelling. “ Did you know that fine-look- 
ing officer who rode in front of the party ? ” I 
asked. 

“O yes,” he replied; “that was Eugene 
Dudevant.” 

When my host uttered the name of the of- 
ficer the color rose into Louise’s face. Why 


54 


The Girl in Checks. 


should her cheeks assume a crimson hue at the 
mention of the name of a United States rev- 
enue official? Had he wronged her in any 
way, or was he any thing to her? Surely I 
thought that all the mysteries that would ever 
confront me were destined to be crowded into 
my short stay at Tom Thaxton’s. My host 
kept on, however, ignorant of the reverie into 
which Louise’s crimson face had plunged me. 

“He’s a wild one, too — no more afeard of 
bullets than I am of Betsy. But they always 
leave these parts like a greased streak of light- 
nin’, when they have made a raid, beca’se it 
wouldn’t be safe for ’em to stay. Listen at 
them horns! There’ll be blood shed. I’m 
afeard.” 

The range of mountains round about us 
seemed to be alive with hunters, who blew one 
prolonged blast. I shall never forget the im- 
pression that the sound of those horns made 
upon me as it echoed and reverberated through 
the coves and over the lofty peaks of those 
towering crags. “ What does it mean? ” I con- 
vulsively asked. 


55 


Some Amusing Experiences. 

“ It’s the people a-givin’ warnin’ that there’s 
been a raid,” answered my host. 

Ah! I understood. Sound travels faster 
than horsemen. It was a call to the rescue. 
A few minutes later we heard in the distance 
rapid firing. It was down the valley, in the 
direction the little company of officers had 
gone. 

“ I told you somebody was goin’ to be hurt,” 
ejaculated my host. “ Some one will be killed 
thess as shoar as Betsy’s my boss.” 

When the gunshots ceased there also died 
away the last lingering echoes of the blast of 
a dozen hunters’ horns. There was again a 
perfect calm, broken only by Tom Thaxton’s 
tongue. 

“ Well, some folks ’lows there han’t no here- 
after, but it stall’s to reason in my mind that 
there’ll have to be a hereafter to straighten 
out all the crooked things that turn up down 
here. Just beca’se folks won’t do right all this 
breakin’ o’ the Sabbath and sufferin’ is brought 
on; yes, sir, the Scriptur’ is mighty true when 
it says: ‘The way of the transgressor is hard.’ 


56 


The Girl in Checks. 


An’ it stan’s to reason, accordin’ to that Script- 
ur’, that if we do right, our way an’t goin’ to 
be hard. Folks bring most of their trouble on 
theirselves.” 

Such, in part, were Tom Thaxton’s com- 
ments on the occurrence that had evidently 
thrilled the entire community with great ex- 
citement. But that occurrence, sad as it proved 
to be, nor any thing else seemed destined to 
break away the clouds of mystery that had 
enveloped that humble cabin. “Well, let the 
dead bury their dead,” said he, ‘ ’tan’t no bus- 
iness of ourn to be lookin’ after violators o’ the 
Sabbath, an’ the laws o’ the land, too. We 
must be a-ridin* toward the ‘ Flat.’ ” 

Our little company of four were soon in the 
saddle, and the mysterious little cabin was 
robbed for awhile of its inmates, but so far it 
had yielded up none of the mysteries that en- 
shrouded it like a thick cloud. 


®^^AFT£:l^ \2, 


FLAT ROCK CHURCH AND THE CONGREGATION. 

S we rode away from the little cabin 



AjL perched upon the mountain-side I cher- 
ished the hope that either on our way to the 
Flat, as the people called it, or at the church 
itself, something would occur or be said which 
would reveal, in some measure at least, the 
cause of the mysterious existence of Louise 
Thaxton. But alas! I was disappointed. The 
problem was not solved, but became more 
problematic. 

The little log meeting-house had taken its 
name from a large, flat rock, which covered an 
area of at least one acre. The surface of the 
rock was about one foot above the level of the 
ground, and was remarkably even. The north- 
east corner of the crude building rested upon 
this rock, and while the other three corners 
were supported by blocks of undressed stone, 
it was evident that these crude pillars rested 


( 57 ) 


58 


The Girl in Checks. 


upon the same large flat rock, the earth that 
hid it from view being only a few inches in 
depth. So this little mountain chapel was in 
reality a ‘‘house founded upon a rock,” and 
such was the first impression that came to one 
the moment he beheld it. The building was 
constructed of round logs. Its dimensions 
were about eighteen by twenty feet. The 
crevices between the logs amply ventilated the 
building. The seats were made of split chest- 
nut slabs, into which holes had been bored and 
legs inserted. These rough stools were back- 
less. The building was not ceiled, and as for 
stoves, they were an unknown article in that 
reigon. A blazing fire, however, of pine logs 
had been kindled in the yard. Such is a true 
picture of Flat Bock Church. 

The congregation was large. Evidently the 
“ new preacher ” had not drawn together this 
immense crowd. There was another cause. 
Their community had been invaded by reve- 
nue officers, two of their citizens had been ar- 
rested, shooting had been heard, somebody 
may have been killed, and the church was the 


Flat Rock Church and the Congregation, 59 

best place to get all the news from every quar- 
ter; therefore the entire community came to- 
gether at the church. The congregation was 
in a high state of excitement. 

Knots of men had come together in the sun- 
ny places all over the church-yard. Their 
blue jeans home-spun suits, cut, I almost af- 
firmed, in ancient and modern styles, at least 
approximating every style and rivaling no one 
of them, and set with all kinds of buttons, 
from the bright bronze military button that 
had been worn by some soldier through the 
last great civil struggle between the States 
down to the large, old-fashioned and now quite 
obsolete agate button that had evidently be- 
longed to Kevolutionary sires, and which had 
been carefully preserved, not as relics, but 
purely from a spirit of economy, and handed 
down from father to son through all those in- 
tervening years. 

Rollicking maidens, arm in arm, continually 
paced the pathway that led from the church to 
the spring. Dresses of all shades and various 
styles adorned their persons, as to shade, par- 


60 


The Girl in Checks, 


ticularly red, green, and yellow. Each maid 
was, apparently, either listening to or pouring 
some important secret into the ears of her 
companion. 

The matronly women had gathered into a 
group near the fire of pine-logs, and, with 
pipes in full blast, and true to their sex, they 
all talked at the same time — a feat, by the way, 
which the sterner sex has never been able to 
accomplish, owing to his inability to do two 
things at the same time. Every one of them 
seemed to be intensely interested in one lead- 
ing theme. Doubtless it was the capture by 
the revenue force of the illicit distillery, and 
the correlations of that fact. 

The young men had gathered together in 
the sunshine upon the surface of the large, flat 
rock. They were listening with great interest 
to one of their number, who -seemed all the 
while to have the undisputed right of the floor, 
or rather of the rock. A bit of flaming red 
ribbon was tied in the button-hole of his blue 
jeans coat, a sprig of cedar, plume-like, was 
tucked under his hat-band, while he gestic- 


Flat Rock Church and the Congregation. 61 

ulated with a fantastically carved walking- 
cane. He was evidently a leading character 
among the young hopefuls of Flat Rock com- 
munity. 

A dozen very old men had separated them- 
selves from the groups which I have men- 
tioned, and were sitting with bowed heads 
upon the rail pens that were built over the 
graves of the departed. They seemed to bo 
wholly unconcerned about tho great subject 
that appeared to be claiming the attention of 
everybody else. They were perhaps thinking 
and speaking to each other in undertones of 
the vanities of the present age, of the excel- 
lences of by-gone days, and, perhaps, as aged 
people are wont to do, of the last resting-place 
that awaited their frail and aged bodies some- 
where near the spot where they then sat. 

Such is a bird’s-eye view of the state of the 
congregation at the Flat when we reached that 
point. Surely something more than we knew 
of had happened, for the excitement seemed 
to be intense. We had alighted and made fast 
our steeds when we were approached by a man 


62 


The Girl in Checks. 


who came from one of the little knots of indi- 
viduals that had gathered in the church-yard, 
and who informed us that Eugene Dudevant 
had been killed that morning while he was 
conveying his two piisoners to the county jail. 
I looked into the face of Louise. She stood 
transfixed to the spot, and was as pale as death; 
but by a powerful efibrt of the will she re- 
strained her feelings and moved away toward 
the church, while Tom Thaxton ejaculated 
what seemed to be his favorite expression: 
“Well, the Scriptur’ says: ‘The way of the 
transgressor is hard.’ ” 

It was eleven o’clock, the hour for preach- 
ing. The congregation was nervous and ex- 
cited. The preacher was in the unmerciful 
meshes of bewilderment, and I doubt very 
much, as well as these mountaineers like to 
discuss the merits of a sermon,' if the sermon 
of that day ever went through the mill of crude 
disputation. It was a relief to me when I 
again threw myself into the saddle and rode a 
dozen miles away, and farther into the im- 
mense piles of earth and rock that constitute 


Flat Rock Church and the Congregation, 63 

the far-famed Blue Bidge Mountains, to meet 
my afternoon appointment at Chestnut Plains. 
I preached to the little assembly that after- 
noon as best I could, and then rode away to 
the county seat, where I slept soundly, and 
dreamed over the “ Mystery of the Mountain 
Cabin” and its mysterious inmate, the “Girl 
in Checks.” 


ui. 


EUGENE DUDEVANT. 

I SAW Eugene Dndevant but once. There 
was something attractive about his person. 
He was riding with all the grace and exqui- 
site horsemanship of a gallant cavalier. But 
alas! it was a ride into the very jaws of death. 
His office was an unpopular one. These 
mountaineers looked upon distilling as an in- 
alienable right, or at least many of them did. 
It was the quickest and easiest way by which 
they could turn the scanty produce of their 
soil into money. They could not understand 
why the Government sought to monopolize, in 
a degree, the whisky trade and its manufact- 
ure. If it was just and legal,, in the ethical 
sense of these terms, for the Government to 
grant a rights backed and supported by its 
power, in consideration of a stipulated sum of 
money paid to it, to certain individuals to pro- 
duce and sell whisky, did not that very act 
( 64 ) 


65 


Eugene Dudevant. 

upon the part of the Government go to estab- 
lish that there was a positive necessity for the 
production of spirits. If such were the case, 
did the Government have the right to dis- 
criminate against any section of the country, 
so far as the production of whisky was in- 
volved? 

These mountaineers therefore claimed that 
the license system discriminated, virtually, 
against them, because, they maintained, they 
were poor and isolated and could not, there- 
fore, meet the requirements of the Govern- 
ment. Furthermore, they argued that if whis- 
ky was a necessity to men, it was as much so to 
them as to others ; and therefore they claimed, 
since it was impossible for them to meet the 
demands of the Government in this matter, or 
to procure the article otherwise than by man- 
ufacture, it was their inalienable right to 
make whisky in spite of the Government. 
Secondly, they claimed that, if whisky was 
not a necessity, and if its production was a 
wrong and a misdemeanor which ought to be 
punished and suppressed by the laws of the 
5 


66 


The Girl in Checks, 


land, then the payment of license could not 
possibly make it a less misdemeanor or ob- 
literate its criminality ; “ therefore,” they 
said, “we have as much right, intrinsically 
speaking, to do wrong as has the Govern- 
ment.” 

And, indeed, is not the Government as deep 
in the scale' of criminality as any illicit distil- 
lery hid away in the dark coves of the Blue 
Eidge Mountains? Is not the sale of license 
on the part of the Government a virtual ad- 
mission of the crime of making and selling in- 
toxicants? And is not the principle involved 
precisely the same as that abominable usage 
and docrine of Eoman Catholicism whereby 
that priest-ridden Church sells her indul- 
gences ? 

The writer has often sat by the firesides of 
these plain mountaineers, and listened to these 
arguments. Who will say that they are not 
logical, and based upon the strictest principles 
of justice? How can the Government itself 
answer these arguments, save by the fiat of its 
laws? Indeed, there is but one answer to their 


67 


Eugene DudevanL 

crude but logical appeals, and that is univer- 
sal prohibition; for no Government has a 
right to do, either directly or indirectly, that 
which it prevents its subjects from doing. 
For what indeed would the principle upon 
which the license system is based lead to, were 
it applied to morals and ethics generally? 

I have introduced these thoughts here to 
show why the office which Eugene Dudevant 
held was unpopular. Its insufferable nature 
did not spring so much from incorrigible dis- 
loyalty to the Government on the part of the 
violators as from the injustice which they 
saw in the laws which restrained and prohib- 
ited them from doing that which the Govern- 
ment itself did indirectly by its license sys- 
tem. 

Eugene Dudevant, holding his commission 
from the Government, rushed into the midst 
of these towering mountains, sought the con- 
cealed distilleries among the craggy peaks, 
apprehended the transgressors, and they killed 
him. 

Physically speaking, he was a noble sped- 


68 


The Girl in Checks, 


men of Southern manhood — tall, handsome, 
genteel-looking — a veritable Carolinian in ev- 
ery aspect of his bearing. 

It was doubly sad that so noble-looking a 
man should have been slaughtered in so igno- 
minious a manner. He was shot down with- 
out a moment’s warning. The shrill, pro- 
longed blast of a dozen horns, and then came 
the bullet from the gun of the assassin, as he 
lay concealed in the bush by the road-side. 
How in its unsuspected phase like the last 
trump that shall sound the death-knell of time! 
Without a moment even for a last prayer he 
was called away from earth. The charge was 
well aimed, it went straight to the heart, and 
the gallant rider reeled from his saddle a 
corpse. 

Though he had for several years lived a lewd 
fellow “ of the baser sort,” he was not a plebe- 
ian. The best blood of the State coursed 
through his veins, for he was the son of a 
wealthy, aristocratic rice - planter. He had 
been reared amid the most exquisite luxury 
that wealth could afford. He was educated at 


69 


Eugene DudevanU 

the best schools of Europe, and, notwithstand- 
ing the degraded life he was leading, his re- 
finement and elite bearing were not completely 
annihilated. But alas! as is too often the 
case, one all-important element had been ig- 
nored in his rearing — a strict attention to his 
moral development. 

One of the saddest blots upon the pages of 
the history of the death-struggles of the “ Old 
South,”were it written, would be the downfall 
and utter ruin of many of Carolina’s noble 
sons, whose families, prior to the throes of re- 
construction, stood pre-eminent in the State, 
both in political and social circles. One of 
the foulest blots upon the pages of her other- 
wise bright escutcheon is not that of the in- 
stitution of slavery (for that the South has 
made ample defense), but the great fact that 
among certain classes position and wealth 
took the place, to a great degree, of morality 
and religion — that is, the tendency of ante 
helium institutions in the South was toward 
the formation of castes as inflexible and iron- 
bound as those of heathen India. Men were 


70 


'The Girl in Checks, 


beginning to be honored because they were of 
certain distinguished families, and not because 
of their inherent worth. When the reaction 
came many fell. They could not adjust them- 
selves to the new order of things, and there- 
fore only the fittest of them survived the won- 
derful revolution. 

To that class which failed to stand the shock 
of the awful disruption Eugene Dudevant be- 
longed. In all his training he failed to at- 
tain that degree of moral culture and worth 
necessary to support him in the trials incident 
to this life, to guide and protect him amid the 
throes, shocks, and struggles through which 
his native State was called to pass. 

The final result was but the legitimate effect 
of a cause deeply imbedded in the very atmos- 
phere of his boyhood days. Hence the proud 
patrician dies away from friends and home, a 
martyr to no cause, but a devotee at the shrine 
of prodigality and sensualism. The bullet 
that sent him to his long home came from a 
gun in the hands of one of his own country- 
men and a plebeian. 


71 


Eugene Dudevant 

Such thoughts crowd themselves into my 
mind as I record the revelations of the mount- 
ain cabin, and the reader, ere he completes 
these pages, will adjudge them right. 

I watched the casket that contained Dude- 
vant’s manly form, as the pall-bearers, a lewd, 
debased crowd to be sure, placed it upon the 
train, and sent it to the old homestead in the 
lower part of the State, to be interred in the 
old Dudevant family grave-yard. 

The most appropriate epitaph, were sincer- 
ity and truth always practiced in such things, 
would be this superscription upon the tomb: 
“ The Stkoke op a Father’s Hand.” 




BURIAL OF EUGENE DUDEVANT, AND A LOOK INTO 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 

HE writer stood at the window of his room 



i on the day following that on which 
Engene Dndevant was killed, and beheld the 
corpse pass through the street of the little vil- 
lage to the depot, whence it was sent to the 
old family bnrying-gronnd for interment. No 
train of sorrowing relatives and friends fol- 
lowed the corpse. It was a sad scene on 
that account. But follow that body to its 
destination, to that place of sepulture which 
already bristles with artistically carved shafts 
and columns that mark tl\e resting-places of 
six generations of the Dudevants; walk among 
the silent tombs, read the epitaphs, and learn 
how honorable in State and in society many 
of these were who now sleep in the dust; 
mark the lavish expenditure of means on this 
one silent spot; walk among the stately mag- 


( 72 ) 


Burial of Eugene Budevant 73 

nolias and the beautiful evergreens; mark the 
steel railings inclosing the sacred spot, and 
covered with the thorn-armored hedge-rose — 
and these things will speak in words that you 
cannot misinterpret, telling you eloquently 
that the Dudevants once revered the memory 
of their dead and spared no expense to embel- 
lish and beautify their last resting-place. But 
see that little party of revenue officials as they 
lower their comrade into the grave. There is 
not a tear-stained cheek there. Their faces 
are flushed, but not from grief. They hastily 
let the corpse down into the grave, and as 
hastily All it up, and then they drive two 
stakes into the ground, one to mark the foot 
and the other the head of the grave. There 
is no minister present to utter the solemn 
committal, “ dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth 
to earth.” There is no “word of comfort,” no 
hymn floating out in soft, measured tones upon 
the still evening air. Shall I characterize it 
as worse than a heathen burial? Even they 
reverence their gods at such times. The work 
is finished, and these lewd fellows, as they 


u 


The Girt in Checks, 


stand about the grave, pass around the de- 
canter of captured contraband whisky, and 
drink to the memory of their departed col- 
league. Alas for depraved humanity! The 
devil officiates at a burying. The scene is 
sickening; turn away from it, and walk out of 
this richly decorated inclosure, this sacred 
spot in which the arch-fiend now holds high 
carnival among the base associates of the 
murdered man, and look over the broad acres 
of the Dudevant homestead, with its extensive 
rice-fields and unrivaled cotton-lands, dotted 
over with little villages of well-painted, cozy 
little cottages, the homes of the slaves who 
once tilled the broad fields before you. But 
behold how the destroyer has already defaced 
these fertile fields. Neglect and decay is writ- 
ten on every object. 

Turn from this fascinating scene, even so 
while under the merciless hand of decay, and 
wend your way up the long avenue of live-oaks 
to the old Dudevant homestead dwelling. 
Look upon its superb stateliness, walk up the 
flight of marble steps and pull the door-bell; 


Burial of Eugene Dudevant 75 

ask Marm Phyllis, bowing already under the 
weight of threescore and ten years, to show 
you through the interior of the magnificent 
dwelling. Once within you are enchanted 
and enraptured. Every thing is truly superb. 
Magnificent and richly carved furniture, a 
rare library collected at great expense and se- 
lected with the greatest care. Bare works of 
art hang from the frescoed walls, and every 
thing goes, unmistakably, to show that wealth 
and refinement were once the supreme rulers 
of this home. 

As you look upon this beautiful home, you in- 
tuitively ask yourself this question: “ How did 
Eugene Dudevant come to leave all this mag- 
nificence and grandeur, for it was his home, 
and die a violent and untimely death in a 
mountain cove of Western South Carolina, a 
debased revenue ofiicer? ” 

The solution of the problem is easy. Louis 
Dudevant had but two children, Eugene and 
Estelle. There was but two years’ difference 
in their ages, and Estelle was the elder of the 
twain. She exerted a great and good infiu- 


76 


The Girl in Checks. 


ence over Eugene as they were growing up. 
Every care and sorrow were curtained off from 
them, and they were as happy as mortals can 
well be in this world. Eugene was attentive 
and devoted to his sister. 

If “The Oaks” (for that was the name by 
which the homestead was known far and near) 
was a pleasant place, it was made so by these 
happy children. They were bred to aristoc- 
racy. They were taught to be proud of their 
blood. From earliest infancy they had been 
led to believe that the social position of the 
Dudevant family for ages past, as well as their 
property, differentiated them from the masses 
of humanity. Therefore these children had 
gathered around them as their associates the 
wealthiest, the most intelligent, as well as the 
most refined* and elite people that the old Pal- 
metto State could afford. “The Oaks” was 
universally known as a jolly place. Many a 
satin-robed belle’s slippered feet have, with 
measured step, many a time kept pace with the 
sweet cadences of the mellow-toned violin in 
these spacious but now silent halls. Costliest 


Burial of Eugene DudevanU 77 

wines and brandies were once sipped at these 
boards by elitest belles and beaus, and many a 
time produced that artificial good cheer which 
once made these frescoed walls echo with the 
merry laughter of jolly visitors. 

But “ The Oaks,” after all, was not an attract- 
ive place simply because nature had lavished 
upon it scenery so fascinating and resplend- 
ent. Neither was it a happy home because 
art and wealth had contributed so much to its 
beauty and magnificence. All of these things 
combined did not make the place home. 

The majestic, silently sweeping Pee Dee that 
almost encircled the grand old building, the 
far-famed and sweet-scented magnolias, the 
stately live-oaks draped in the long, weird- 
looking moss swaying back and forth in the 
slightest breeze, and the magnificent dwelling 
surrounded by the little villages of tenement 
houses, orchards of semi-tropical fruits and 
gardens of ever-blooming flowers, made “ The 
Oaks ” an enchanting spot, just as there are 
many such places in this semi-tropical clime. 

It was not all of these things combined that 


78 


The Girl in Checks. 


drew to “ The Oaks ” the crowds of merry visit- 
ors. Nor did these things make home a pleas- 
ant place for Engene and Estelle; for all of 
these things yet remain, and the old mansion 
is as silent as the tomb. No merry crowds of 
visitors have crossed its threshold in twenty 
long years. 

Homes and places, to make them attractive, 
must have souls, and the souls of places are 
as easily corrupted as are those of men. 
Homes die like men. There are diseases and 
calamities just as fatal to them as they are to 
us, who are “so wonderfully and fearfully 
made.” One of these maladies, so fatal in 
their results, had fastened its deathly, poison- 
ous fang into the grand old mansion at “ The 
Oaks,” and the once merry home had yielded 
up the ghost. 

Louis Dudevant’s kind and' sweet-spirited 
wife died long years ago, but the gentle, amia- 
ble Estelle inherited her virtues and therefore 
filled that otherwise irreparable gap, and it 
was home, sweet home still to Eugene. 

Years rolled on, and smoothly flowed the 


Burial of Eugene DudevanL 79 

current of home life. But there came at last 
a terrific shock that caused that home to vi- 
brate from center to circumference. The 
chilly hand of death was laid upon the life of 
that home. 

Louis Dudevant, it is necessary to state, 
was stern, unyielding, and uncompromisingly 
proud. In a fit of anger he had virtually 
driven his only daughter from her paternal 
roof. It was indeed a sad stroke; for how 
can home exist without wife, sister, or daugh- 
ter? Without the cheering presence of these 
ministering angels home must die. 

After this sad event, which we shall explain 
in its proper place, stern old Louis Dudevant 
and Eugene remained at the old homestead, 
but alas ! all of its attractions were gone. The 
hand of death was daily tightening its grip 
on “The Oaks,” and the once jolly place is 
doomed erelong to lie cold in death. 

O the dead homes that live only in the 
memory of their once happy inmates! Such 
homes come up vividly in the minds of many 
a man and many a woman who have passed 


80 


The Girl in Checks, 


the meridian of life. Where now are the hap- 
py homes of our childhood’s innocent years? 
They live with many of us only on memory’s 
page. 

But the death of the home at “ The Oaks ” 
was sadder than usual, because it was a mur- 
dered home. Louis Dudevant killed it. That 
dark day when Estelle stepped out from under 
the shadow of the stately mansion, under the 
frown of her own father, was its death-stroke. 

Ten years from that event Louis Dudevant 
had been laid away in yonder beautiful ceme- 
tery to await the final Judgment. He had 
witnessed the great struggle between the 
States; he had, in common with other South- 
erners, experienced largely its bitter results, 
and just as the black clouds of civil war were 
being swept from the hbrizon, he had fixed all 
of his property on Eugene, -and a few years 
afterward went the way of all the world. 

It is almost needless to say that “ The Oaks ” 
was no longer home for Eugene. Ten long 
years he had been haunted by the former as- 
sociations of his sweet-spirited sister, but the 


Burial of Eugene Dudevant, 81 

blood-poison (can I call the prond, aristocrat- 
ic spirit which had been bred in him by a bet- 
ter name?) which had taken fast hold upon 
him, together with the bitter feelings he had 
imbibed from intimate association with his 
father during those ten years that they had 
lived alone at “The Oaks,” had caused him 
to heap undying curses upon the head of that 
lovely, unprotected sister who had once made 
home so attractive. The reaction of his bitter 
spirit rebounded upon his devoted head at his 
father’s death. He became restless, he longed 
for some power to break off from his bitter 
soul the tormenting pangs that had fastened 
themselves thereto. He was indeed homeless 
with all the possessions that had been heaped 
upon him. Here, then, is the solution of the 
problem. This explains why Eugene Dude- 
vant fell on that beautiful Sabbath morning 
in a mountain cove, pierced to the heart by a 
bullet from an assassin’s gun. 

Ah! there are indeed murderers who have 
accomplished their fearful work long after 
their bodies have been committed to the tomb. 

6 


82 


The Girl in Checks, 


Sucli a murderer was Louis Dudevant, a post- 
humous murderer, and that too of his own 
chidren. 

Plain Tom Thaxton was indeed right when 
he said, in substance at least, that there must 
be a court hereafter to try the crimes and 
avenge outraged justice in such cases as these 
which the courts of this world can never 
reach. 

These facts I have anticipated in this frag- 
ment of sectional history, for the sake of mak- 
ing plain my story. The dead, as we shall see 
by and by, sometimes speak, and in so doing 
unlock many mysteries. 


©HAFThi^ uiii. 


A VISIT INTO THE REGION BEYOND. 

I T is a fact known to those who have traveled 
in the Bine Eidge Mountains that the peo- 
ple always tell you of certain customs prevail- 
ing farther up in the mountain wilds. They 
frequently speak of these customs as “the 
way people do up in the mountains,” thus mak- 
ing the inexperienced traveler feel that he is 
ever approaching, yet never able to reach, that 
point in “ the land of the sky ” where he may 
safely say that he has been into the mountains 
proper. 

My afternoon appointment on the first Sun- 
day in February was at Chestnut Plains, ten 
miles from the Flat. The direction from the 
above-named point was north-westerly, thus 
carrying me still farther into the mountains. 
The log meeting-house was constructed very 
much on the same plan as the building at Flat 
Eock. It was located on a level plateau of 

( 83 ) 


84 


The Girl in Checks. 


table-land, covered with a grove of chestnut- 
oaks, and closely shut in by frowning mount- 
ains on every side. North-west of the church 
the scene was truly inspiring. Beginning 
about fifty yards from the door of the little 
building, where a great peak arose abruptly 
and semi-perpendicularly from this level spot, 
there mounted up peak upon peak, mountain 
upon mountain, until finally the tops of the 
distant spurs seemed to fade away from mortal 
vision, having hid their heads in the deep blue 
sky. 

I reached the church on that long to be re-, 
membered Sabbath in February, 1880, awhile 
before time for service, and I stood in the 
church-yard and watched the assembling of 
the congregation. Many came from the north- 
west, yet from the level plateau upon which 
the church was built that portion of the coun- 
try seemed to me to be wholly inaccessible. 
Looking from the church-yard upon those al- 
most cloud-crowned, broken masses of earth 
and rock, one would be slow to believe that even 
the agile deer could make its way over those 


A Visit into the Region Beyond, 85 

stupendous granite-girt mountains. But every 
one wlio has traveled in “ the land of the sky ” 
knows that mountains are like the troubles 
and difficulties that loom up before us in the 
rugged pathway of life — they frequently van- 
ish when we reach them. 

This towering, broken, precipitous country 
was inhabited. There were many winding, 
rocky roads, coiling themselves, Laocoon-like, 
about those huge peaks. 

I had on a former occasion attentively stood 
within the little church-yard at this place, and, 
while the congregation was gathering, had 
watched with much interest the dehut of aged 
mountaineers, tottering along with staff in 
palsied hand, as well as flaxen-haired, fair- 
skinned, blue-eyed young men and buxom 
mountain maidens, mounted upon their little 
wiry ponies, from this apparently inaccessible 
quarter. As they came into view at the edge 
of the little clearing which constituted the 
hitching-groundj the impression always made 
upon me by their sudden advent was that of 
some shaggy monster disgorging his prey, for 


The Girl in Checks, 


86 

they seemed to come out of the solid mass of 
earth itself. The highway at the point where 
they came into sight was arched over by the 
thick foliage, or limbs rather of the giant 
oaks on either side of the road, and resembled 
the mouth of a great cave leading down into 
the bowels of the earth. But on this the oc- 
casion of my second visit I watched the dis- 
gorgement with keener interest than at my first, 
for at my last appointment at that place I had 
promised a long, lean, cadaverous - looking 
mountaineer that on my return to that point I 
would spend the night with him. He was from 
that, to me, hitherto unexplored region. On 
the occasion of my first visit I had been at- 
tracted by the awkward and ridiculous manner 
of his advent from the mouth of this imagina- 
ry monster. There was something truly ludi- 
crous about it. The pony which he rode was 
small. It moved along with a kind of double 
shuffle step, and seemed rather to twist itself 
along than to walk with that free and easy 
motion common to the horse. All of its mo- 
tive power seemed to be pent up in its shaggy 


A Visit into the Begion Beyond. 8? 

little tail, which was never at rest. Its spiral 
motion seemed to act as a propelling force 
upon the beast’s body. The feet of the rider 
were only a few inches from the ground. The 
picture produced was that of a large boy rid- 
ing a goat. The rider always carried a regu- 
lar undertaker's look on his face. This solemn 
demeanor and correspondingly austere and 
sorrowful deportment observable in every 
movement and look of this denizen of the hills 
made a rich setting to the scene which I am 
trying to describe. As the pony moved for- 
ward the rider seemed to proceed one side at a 
time. One side went forward with a quick, spas- 
modic jerk, and came to a complete stop; when 
another spiral motion of the pony’s tail im- 
parted the necessary force, and the other side 
was likewise carried forward to its stopping- 
place. In this amusing manner the pony and 
its rider made remarkable speed. The reader 
can readily imagine what a ridiculous picture 
all of these things combined produced. 

As I stood watching the egress of these den- 
izens of the “ everlasting hills ” on that mem- 


88 


The Girl in Checks, 


orable afternoon my eyes at last canght sight 
of my promised host. The propeller had lost 
none of its activity since I beheld the twain at 
my last visit, but the undertaker's look had ap- 
parently grown a shade sadder, which perhaps 
was the natural outgrowth of the thought that 
a preacher would soon be a guest at his se- 
cluded mountain home. 

So I would indeed have the pleasure and 
privilege of traversing the regions beyond. I 
confess to no little degree of excitement and 
curious expectancy at the thought of being 
swallowed up by the frowning mountains, 
w^hich I have already described. 

The sermon was concluded, and we took the 
road leading to the home of my host. It was 
to me a long, lonesome ride, notwithstanding 
the scenery was magnificently grand, frequent- 
ly challenging all effort at description. We 
wound around mountains, crossed over lofty 
spurs, descended into dark ravines, and trav- 
ersed beautiful valleys; yet I felt depressed 
during the entire journey. This feeling of de- 
pression may have arisen from several causes 


A Visit into the Region Beyond, 89 

— the reaction of the nervous system after 
preaching; the warm, hazy, unseasonable 
weather for February; the sad visage and dif- 
fidence of my companion; or the thought that 
possibly I was being swallowed by the imag- 
inary monster which I had pictured to myself 
as disgorging its prey at the little chapel. 
Any one of these causes, or all of them com- 
bined, may have produced the melancholy 
feelings that depressed my soul during that 
long, tedious journey. 

But these gloomy spirits were destined to 
an early grave. We at last reined up our 
steeds in front of Abe Grimshaw’s house— for 
this was the name of my host — and the tidy 
and inviting appearance of things was evi- 
dence that this would be a pleasant place to 
rest, and such I found it to be by many actual 
experiences. The house was a double cabin, 
overgrown with vines. The large logs from 
which it was constructed, where exposed on 
the outside of the building, were covered with 
moss, indicating that it was a very old build- 
ing. The present occupant had inherited it 


90 


The Girl in Checks, 


from his father, who built it while the wig- 
wams of the Cherokees dotted the valleys of 
the Eastatoe and Oolenoi, and the red man 
sought undisturbed his game upon the beau- 
tiful banks of the Keeowee. It nestled down 
in one of those beautiful coves so frequently 
met with By the traveler who dares to traverse 
the far-famed Blue Eidge. It seemed to be 
endeavoring to hide itself away from the rest 
of the world, and verily it had succeeded. For 
quite a century the old building had been 
hemmed in by the lofty spurs of the Blue 
Eidge. The busy world was unconscious of 
its existence, and the inmates of that lonely 
home had known little during all that space of 
time of the affairs of the world, or even of the 
State in which their home was located. 

Primitive customs, primitive furniture, 
primitive every thing, prevailed here. There 
upon the bare walls hung the old-fashioned 
dinner-horn that had summoned a past as well 
as a present generation to many an old-fash- 
ioned dinner. Upon the antlers of a buck 
hung the old-time flint and steel rifle that had 


91 


A Visit into the Hegion Beyond. 

served perhaps four or five generations. It 
was brought from the Highlands of Scotland 
by an ancestor of the present occupant of this 
secluded home. Every thing wore an air of 
antiquity, even to the pewter basin in which 
the family bathed their hands and faces. 
Amid such scenes as these my melancholy 
spirits fled away, and I felt as though I had 
been transported to one of the mediaeval 
homes of the Highlands of Scotland. 

Dinner was announced. The crude earth- 
enware, the wooden spoons and bowls, and the 
large gourd that contained the milk and which 
took the place of a pitcher, together with 
many such things, pointed to an age that has 
long since passed away. 

Such was the home of Abe Grimshaw. To 
one reared out from under the shadow of these 
mountains such articles of furniture were rare 
indeed, and spoke eloquently of 

The days of auld lang syne. 

There are many such homes in “ the land of 
the sky,” where the grating noise of cards 
that comb the fleece of the mountain sheep 


92 


The Girl in Checks. 


into rolls for the spinner’s hand may yet greet 
the ear; where the lonesome hum of the spin- 
ning-wheel of long ago and the dull thump, 
thump, of the massive loom of our great- 
grandmothers are still heard. 

What interest could we justly expect these 
isolated mountaineers to take in any of the 
great national issues of the day? It makes 
very little difference with them as to who is 
President of the United States, or even as to 
who is Governor of their own State. The 
great phosphate interests, so long a bone of 
contention in their native State, as well as the 
contest between State and denominational 
schools; the historic and eventful days of 
1876, together with all the throes incident to 
the new birth of an oppressed and once down- 
trodden State — all these things combined have 
no charms for them. They are an independent 
class of citizens, as incapable of grasping great 
national issues, of recognizing the justice and 
equity of State or United States laws when 
conflicting with what they conceive to be their 
inalienable rights, of appreciating the general 


93 


A Visit into the Region Beyond, 

benefit of a common government, as their soil 
is of producing the fleecy staple of their na- 
tive State. 

So much I learned during my visit to Abe 
Grimshaw’s. When our conversation, by mer- 
est accident, turned upon the great struggle be- 
tween the States my sad-faced host remarked; 
“We uns never font on nary side; ’cause 
’twa’n’t nothin’ to us. But it seemed like they 
wer’ ’termined to press us in anyhow. Them 
‘ light duty men ’ done a sight o’ devilment in 
thes eparts. They wer’ afeard to fight the’r- 
selves, and hung around here to arrest us. 
There wer’ a whole ridgement of ’em camped 
over at Tunnel Hill, an’ they s’arched this 
country from Dan to Beersheba, pretendin’ to 
be huntin’ deserters; an’ they cotch lots of our 
boys an’ sent ’em off. Some of ’em had been, 
an’ had quit an’ come home, ’cause ’twa’n’t no 
war of the’rn; an’ some of ’em never had been, 
’cause they didn’t see no use of fightin’ that-a- 
way. Let them that had the niggers fight. 
But them ‘light duty men’ ’lowed that no- 
body didn’t have no right to quit an’ come 


94 


The Girl in Checks, 


home. It was always powerful strange to me 
that a man couldn’t quit fightin’ when he 
wanted to. If a man wanted to quit an’ come 
home for to see his wife, ’twa’n’t none o’ their 
business; seemed monstrous mysterfyin’ to me 
that a man couldn’t take a little blowin’ -spell 
when he got outen wind a-fightin’ them yan- 
kees. But they ’lowed ’twas their business. 
They never put their ban’s on me, shear’s I’m 
named Abe. What powder I had to burn [an’ 
powder got mighty sca’ce] I was goin’ to burn 
it agin the deer, and not agin my fellow-creet- 
ur. But they got Sam Houston. Sam had 
been off, an’ had come back. They tuck an’ 
tied him, an’ dragged him off in the night, an’ 
that was the' las’ we ever hearn of poor Sam 
Houston. Poor Miss Houston was so dis- 
tressed about it that the next mornin’ after 
they tuck Sam she tuck her little baby gal, 
’Cinda, thess a year ole, an’ followed on after 
’em, barefooted an’ bareheaded. The poor 
creetur went as fur as Columbia, but when 
she got there she wer* plum beyant herself, 
and they tuck her up an’ put her in the ’sylum, 


95 


A Visit into the Region Beyond, 

an’ she died there; an’ Sam was shot fur de- 
sertin,’ I reckon — leastwise we han’t hearn 
nothin’ frum him sense. An’ ’Cinda — all the 
chile they had — was left alone an’ by herself 
in that big city. But some good ’oman tuck 
her an’ brung her up to a smart-sized gal; but 
when ’Cinda got big emough to think for her- 
self she come back to these parts, an’ she is 
one ’o the best ’o ’omankind. Poor creetur! 
every time I see her I think of Miss Houston’s 
face, as she followed after them good -fur - 
nuthin’ ‘light duty men’ that tuck an’ tied 
Sam an’ dragged him off the same as if he were 
some wild varmint.” 

Such, in part, was Abe Grimshaw’s conver- 
sation. He had spoken but few words prior 
to this volume of sectional history, and I had 
come to the conclusion that my host was one 
of those say-nothing characters so often en- 
countered everywhere. But all men, I have 
observed, will talk, and talk fluently, when you 
draw them out along the line they are accus- 
tomed to think. Abe Grimshaw had doubtless 
thought much of the sad experiences through 


96 


The Girl in Checks, 


which his secluded community had passed 
during the great civil struggle that shook our 
entire country from center to circumference. 
He had his own ideas of political economy 
and of the great principles of justice and eq- 
uity that should influence the actions of ev- 
ery subject relative to the State. They may 
have been narrow and crude; but how often is 
it the case, relative to such things, that the 
more learned, and even the most profound, 
statesmen drift, in their estimates of such 
principles, to an opposite extreme! 

Man is constitutionally pre-eminently a self- 
ish being not in that vulgar acceptation of the 
term wherein he looks to his own interest al- 
ways, and never thinks of the rights and im- 
munities of others, but in that higher sense 
wherein he is bound not only by the prompt- 
ings of his own nature, but by the truths of 
revelation to love, peace, and home and fam- 
ily, for the sake of the boon pleasures that 
spring therefrom. To love my home and off- 
spring and interest better than those of an- 
pther is virtuous and conxmendable^ and is 


A Visit into the Region Betjond, 97 

essential to the preservation of chastity and 
society. 

Abe Grimshaw and his intimate companions 
had espoused the cause of neither side. Who 
will be bold enough to brand them as traitors 
and outlaws ? “ Let them that’s got the nig- 

gers do the fightin’ ” may not have been a pa- 
triotic utterance, but when the sentiment con- 
tained therein is reduced to its last analysis, 
it will be readily seen that it contains the ba- 
sis of all human action. It is the common 
plane upon which all individuality moves. It 
is true that Abe Grimshaw’s ignorance was 
any thing else but commendable, but refusing 
to fight for a cause in which he conceived that 
he had no earthly interest was praiseworthy — 
at least from a divine stand-point. To have en- 
lightened his mind may have, doubtless would 
have, changed his opinions. But we are deal- 
ing here not in theories, but with stern reali- 
ties. He was inflexible in what he conceived 
to be his duty. May it ever be so with us! 

The hazy February Sabbath had closed, and 
now the leady hues of morning were peeping 
7 


98 


The Girl in Checks. 


into my little room at Abe Grimshaw’s. The 
atmosphere was fresh and cutting, evincing 
one of those abrupt changes from autumn- 
like weather to that of winter, so frequent in 
that climate. The ground was covered with 
bne vast sheet of snow, and I heartily realized, 
as I stepped from my little chamber, that the 
pleasant weather of the day before had been 
instrumental in inducing me to leave home 
without wraps of any kind. But later, when 
I threw myself into the saddle, wrapped in one 
of Abe Grimshaw’s home-woven bed-blankets, 
I was the recipient of some sound advice: 
“ We uns have a say in’ amongst us that a 
wise man always takes his umberrille, with 
him, fur any fool would think to take it when 
the rain is a-pourin’ down.” 

Thus ended my visit to Abe Grimshaw’s, 
and I rode away meditating upon the pointed 
advice I had received and the bits of sectional 
history I had heard. I had proceeded on the 
return trip only a few miles, however, when, 
to my horror, I discovered that I had lost my 
road. My dejected spirit on the day before 


99 


A Visit into the Region Beyond. 

had debarred me from taking that notice of 
the objects along the road which we passed 
that otherwise I would have done; besides, 
the snow had so covered the road and had 
changed the general appearance of the coun- 
try to such an extent that it required famil- 
iarity with the general topography, at least, of 
the country to keep the way. 

Lost in the mountains! and that, too, in a 
snow-storm. I had pictured the little dwell- 
ing of Abe Grimshaw as lost amid the tower- 
ing peaks, but alas! the personal reality of 
such a thought was by no means so pleasant. 
Never did a creature more earnestly desire to 
be disgorged into the little clearing near the 
little mountain chapel, of which I have al- 
ready spoken, than I did. But “ it is an evil 
wind that blows no one any good;” and had I 
not lost my way on that occasion perhaps this 
bit of the biography of a deserter’s daughter 
would never have been written, and the mount- 
ain cabin would, perhaps, have ever remained 
veiled in mystery. 


1 ^. 


THE FIND ON THE LONELY MOUNTAIN-SIDE. 

Gloom is upon thy lonely hearth, 

O silent house! once filled with mirth; 

Sorrow is in the breezy sound 
Of thy tall cedars whispering round. 

T PEiESSED forward through the snow like 
X a mariner without a chart or compass. A 
blue column of smoke shot up among the leaf- 
less branches of the trees to my left, and, al- 
though I could not see whence it came, I was 
fully persuaded that it issued from some 
dwelling. I determined to seek its shelter; for 
I was not only lost, but I was shivering with 
cold. I therefore turned my horse into the 
pathway that led in the direction of the smoke. 
I was not disappointed, for I had clambered 
along the steep mountain-side for the space of 
scarcely half a mile when through the heavy 
timber I caught a glimpse of the little cab- 
in whence came the smoke. 

It was located on the side and near the base 

( 100 ) 


The Find on the Lonely Mountain-side, 101 

of a large mountain. Fronting the cabin was 
a beautiful valley of several hundred acres 
of arable land, through which the limpid 
Oolenoi made its way like a silver thread. 
The valley was inestimably valuable as a corn- 
farm. The rich, alluvial soil, as the thickly 
studded stalks stripped of their foliage readily 
indicated, made the valley a paradise indeed 
for the corn-growers. Thousands of bushels 
must have been harvested therefrom at the 
last gathering- time; but, strange to say, be- 
sides the grain-houses that studded the out- 
skirts of this broad corn-field, there could be 
seen but one lone cabin wherein there were 
any evidences of life, the one of which I have 
just spoken, and from which came the column 
of blue smoke. It was built upon the side of 
the mountain, its very site impressing one 
with the thought that the builders must have 
regarded the land of the great alluvial plain 
too precious to be^taken up by this crude 
structure. 

The cabin was a very old one. The stately 
cedars that bordered the yard were so ar- 


102 


The Girl in Checks, 


ranged as to leave no donbt in the mind that 
they were planted by the hand of man. The 
logs of the cabin were partially decayed, and 
the roof was overgrown with moss. An ivy 
sprig, planted, doubtless, by some hand that 
had long since ceased to act, had climbed a giant 
oak, covering its trunk and branch; sucking 
away its very life like a vampire, by insensi- 
ble degrees had long since accomplished its 
mission of death, and now the old monarch of 
the forest stood shorn of all its beauty and 
strength. 

These things were unmistakable evidences 
of the great age of the little cabin. But as I 
stood before this isolated home I could not 
help asking myself these questions: “Where 
is the stock necessary to such a farm? where 
are the wagons, plows, and farm implements? 
where are the people necessary to till it?” 

With this train of inquiries flashing through 
the mind, I knocked for ^admission. The call 
was answered by a decrepit old hag. She pre- 
tended to be very deaf, and when I asked the 
privilege of warming she feigned embarrass- 


The Find on the Lonely Mountain-side, 103 

ment, such as is frequently observable in deaf 
people when they do not understand what is 
addressed to them. But a fat, red-faced, lazy- 
looking boy, the only inmate of the house ex- 
cept the old hag about whom we have just 
spoken, came to the rescue, and drawled out 
with a pusillanimous whine: “Uv course 
you uns is mor’n welcome to all the good you 
uns can get out’n them coals. Take er cher 
an’ set down.” 

While he was addressing these words to the 
unexpected visitor he arose from his seat and 
carelessly placed his hand upon the low man- 
tel-piece, knocking therefrom, as if by acci- 
dent, a rusty old cow-bell, which rolled and 
tumbled over the floor as if it were a thing of 
life, and as if its mission in this world was to 
let people know that it possessed a clapper. 
The old hag shuffled toward the rolling bell 
and grasped it by the hook through which the 
girdle passes, and hastened with tottering step 
and palsied hand, which tested the ringing ca- 
pacity of the metal to its utmost degree, to re- 
place the noisy thing in its former position. 


104 


The Girl in Checks, 


This accomplished, she seated herself in the 
opposite jam of the broad fire-place, dipped 
an old black pipe into the embers and puffed 
away, the very picture of aged ignorance, stu- 
pidity, and abandonment. 

The awkward youth kept his lazy attitude, 
gazing brazenly into the visitor’s face while 
he propounded the following questions and 
many more like them: “Wher’ is you uns 
frum? Whut is you unses business in these 
here parts? Has you uns been in these dig- 
gin’s long?” 

I tried as best I could to satisfy his curiosi- 
ty, and in return asked him to whom the plan- 
tation embracing the large valley belonged. 

“Mister Fox,” was his ready answer. 

“And where does Mr. Fox live?” I asked. 

“ Don’t know, sur, but he lives a good ways 
frum here, beca’se when he comes up fur to 
tend an’ gether his crap I hearn his ban’s say 
it tuck ’em two days fur to come.” 

“And what does he do with his corn?” I 
asked. 

“ He puts it in ’em houses down thar in the 


The Find on the Loyiely Mountainside. 105 

valley, an’ sells some nv it, and hauls some iiv 
it away. Me an’ granny stays here to look 
arter his things. Mister Fox is a mighty 
clever man, he is.” 

During this conversation I had ample op- 
portunity to examine my surroundings. Two 
old pine bedsteads, a few stools and crude split- 
bottomed chairs, an old greasy table, a broken 
looking-glass, and a cupboard containing a 
few old-fashioned blue-flowered cups and 
plates, made up the furniture entire, with the 
exception of the cow-bell, the old hag’s pipe, 
a supply of home-raised tobacco which hung 
in its natural state from a stick placed across 
the joist, the stalk having been split a part of 
its length and placed astride the stick, and a 
few bunches of dried boneset, life-everlasting, 
and other herbs, which constituted the old 
woman’s medical supply for the winter. 

While surveying the apartment two things, 
although of very little consequence apparent- 
ly, impressed me. One was the problem how 
the few coals that smoldered upon the hearth 
could produce that column of blue smoke that 


106 


The Girl in Checks. 


belched with such energy from the chimney- 
top, but the soot may have been on fire. This 
was the only solution of the problem that I 
could arrive at. The other was simply this: 
As my eyes wandered over the apartment I 
saw this sentence cut with a knife into the 
plain, unpainted boards of the mantel-piece: 

“CiNDA Houston Was Born July 10th, 1862.” 

Could it be that I was in the cabin that con- 
stituted, in days gone by, the happy home of 
the unfortunate Sam Houston? Was it he, 
so rudely torn from his home and dragged to 
a deserter’s doom, who cut these rude letters 
chronicling the happy event of the birth of 
his only child? It must have been so. 

Truly it was a strange place as well as a 
strange way to record such an event. Never- 
theless it was in accord with many of the acts 
and customs of these simple-hearted, plain 
mountaineers. 

I was so impressed with the bit of personal 
reminiscence relative to Sam Houston that I 
had received from Abe Grimshaw the previ- 
ous night, together with these rude letters cut 


The Find on the Lonely Mountain-side, 107 

into the boards of the mantel-piece, that I 
asked the lubberly youth: “From whom did 
Mr. Fox buy this plantation, and how long 
has he owned it?” 

“Don’t know, sur, but mebby granny kin 
tell you,” was his reply. 

But granny was so deaf that we could make 
her understand nothing whatever, and I was 
compelled to leave the lonely cabin minus the 
information I so much desired. 

The youth, at my request, seemed overwill- 
ing to accompany me to the main road, and to 
direct me, when I parted from him about a 
mile from the mysterious cabin, so that I could 
not again miss the road. 

Thus I left the cabin over which was hung 
a veil of mystery. But to me that veil was 
afterward lifted, and I was permitted to look 
in upon things that had long remained cov- 
ered up to the outside world. What I saw and 
learned are faithfully recorded in these pages, 
and form a piece of sectional history which 
the pen of the historian has never recorded. 
Events none the less interesting, however, on 


108 


The Girl in Checks, 


that account, but a close study of sectional 
history will give the earnest inquirer after 
truth a keener insight into the general truths, 
and a heartier appreciation of the real state 
of affairs as they existed during the dark 
days of the Southern Confederacy, and the 
subsequent years of misrule and oppression. 

Now that the effulgent sun of the New 
South sheds his rays over hill-top and valley, 
let the rising generation imitate the virtues of 
their fathers, and grow wiser and better as 
they read in these pages a faithful portrayal 
of the cowardly acts and nefarious deeds of 
some who were unworthy of the name or the 
place of a Southron. 


©HAPTEi^ 


RANDAL FOX, WHO HAD NO LOVE FOR WAR. 

D UEING the stormy days of 1860, when 
the black clouds of civil war were gath- 
ering thick and fast, when excitement was at 
its highest, and the clarion blast of the call to 
arms was heard over the hills and through the 
vales of our beloved Carolina, Eandal Fox, 
with soldierly bearing, flashy uniform, and 
flushed face, might have been seen organizing 
his company on the court-house green of his 
native county. 

Captain Fox, as he paraded his company of 
brave Carolinians, with their gray uniforms 
and palmetto buttons, up and down the prin- 
cipal streets of the little county seat, was in- 
deed a martial - looking character. As the 
children and ladies of the little village donned 
their palmetto rosettes and waved their little 
flags and handkerchiefs at the passing column, 

he indeed was a foe, could the “ boys in blue ” 

(109) 


110 


The Girl in Checks, 


have seen him, terrible to look upon. Defi- 
ance and victory were written on every linea- 
ment of his countenance. The women and 
children, at least, thought: “Woe be unto that 
part of the blue column that Randal Fox shall 
strike! ” And indeed he would have given the 
Union army no little trouble had his spirit 
and courage mounted to that high point in 
battle that was observable during these dress 
parades and preparatory stages. But alas! 
when the picket guns of the first Manassas 
were heard in the distance Captain Fox grew 
pale, his teeth chattered, and his knees smote 
together; and as he passed hither and thither 
among his men, unable to stand still for a sin- 
gle moment, he declared to his brave company 
that, “on account of a change of climate and 
sleeping out at night he had contracted chills,” 
which he thought would wholly unfit him for 
the active duties of regular service. But when 
his company was wheeled into line of battle, 
and when hundreds of pieces on both sides 
began to belch forth death, the excited and 
cowardly chieftain pusillanimously bellowed 


Randal Fox, Who Had No Love for War. Ill 

out: ^^Run, hoys, for Heaven's sake, run; we'll 
every one he killed!" But the boys did not 
run. How overjoyed, indeed, the craven cap- 
tain would have been had the brave company 
of Carolinians obeyed his orders, or rather the 
involuntary exclamation of a cowardly spirit! 
But the individuals composing that company, 
virtually without a leader, were made of sterner 
stuff ihoxi their nominal captain. 

Later, however, there was given him the op- 
portunity which he coveted. A shell burst 
in front of his company, tearing up a mass of 
earth, but otherwise doing no damage except 
a minute fragment which took a bit of hide 
from the captain’s forefinger. His screams 
were heard above the din of battle, ^nd they 
were piteous indeed. Holding up his hand, as 
will a hound puppy his foot when it is hurt, 
he flew to the rear at a speed closely resem- 
bling that of a renowned trotting-horse of 
the present day, and with yells very much like 
those of the beast to which we have just com- 
pared him. 

The battle was fought and the victory won. 


112 


The Girl in Checks, 


notwithstanding Captain Fox’s forced and un- 
avoidable absence. The Southern Confederacy 
was justly proud of the action of her brave 
boys. The governmental authorities, there- 
fore, very justly concluded that the further 
service of one who had contracted chills in, 
and had given one hand to, the defense of his 
country was not needed in active warfare. 
Captain Randal Fox was therefore discharged 
from active service, and ever afterward, dur- 
ing the great civil struggle, his name appeared 
on the list of “home guards,” “light duty 
men,” etc. In these companies the captain 
could always be seen at the head of the little 
column, with his wounded arm supported by 
a strip of scarlet cloth, doubtless intended as 
emblematical of the blood he had given for 
his country’s defense; and in his countenance 
and about his person there was an air of one 
who had fought and conquered. The children 
of the community, whose fathers were on the 
tented field, looked upon him as a great sol- 
dier, and their eyes dilated with large wonder 
when he told his tjarns about bloody battle- 


Randal Fox, Who Had No Love for War. 113 

fields and narrow escapes. But brave soldiers’ 
wives whispered to each other that he was a 
coward, and ought to be at the front. 

Up to the time of the battle in which Cap- 
tain Fox received that fearful wound, which 
disabled his arm for four years, he had been 
looked upon by his fellow-citizens as an hon- 
est man, and doubtless he was. But it is as- 
tonishing how one failure to meet the reasona- 
ble and just demands of our fellow-beings fre- 
quently develops a character wholly different 
from that formerly possessed. Captain Fox 
had failed, miserably so, as a soldier. His 
conscience was smitten; he felt condemned in 
the estimation of his fellow-citizens. The arm 
in the sling was a living evidence to himself, 
as well as to his countrymen, that he was a 
coward, a liar, and therefore dishonored and 
dishonest. Whatever virtue he may have had 
as a citizen prior to the battle of Manassas 
went down on that (to him) fatal field. He 
was self-condemned; what could men expect 
of him but falsehood, treachery, and deceit? 
He rode at the head of his little column of 
8 


114 


The Girl in Checks. 


beardless boys and disabled men; but if any 
patriotism bad ever glowed in his heart, it had 
now gone to its eternal grave. What did he 
care for the Southern Confederacy ? Though 
he diligently sought deserters, what was he 
but a deserter of the meanest kind? Which 
was the more honorable — a deserter who con- 
scientiously believed that the war was of no 
vital interest to him, and who therefore hid 
himself away in the mountains that surround- 
ed his home, or one who must have recognized 
the importance of the pending issue, but in 
spite of his convictions hid himself behind a 
refuge of lies? 

There was not in all Carolina a more perse- 
vering hunter of deserters than Randal Fox. 
How natural! Accused of a crime ourselves, 
how we would dislike to be brought for trial 
before a jury every member of which them- 
selves had been held in the public estimation 
as guilty of the very crime for which we were 
to be tried! Human nature would teach us, 
no matter what defense we might be able to 
produce, that the final verdict would be guilty. 


Randal Fox^ Who Had No Love for War. 115 

Each juryman would feel called upon to ren- 
der such a verdict, in order to cover up his 
own criminality in the eyes of the public. No 
wonder, then, that Bandal Fox was zealous in 
bringing deserters to justice; it was natural. 
It was simply poor, weak, human nature strug- 
gling to vindicate its deformities and to cover 
up its own defects. Had Kandal Fox stopped 
here it would not have been so bad, but crim- 
inality is progressive. From the little lonely 
cabin on the mountain-side comes a wail of 
agony to which heaven will listen and which 
God will revenge. 




THE ARREST. 


HE moon lit up the towering peaks of 



Jl the Blue Bidge Mountains. The silence 
that reigned everywhere was oppressive. It 
seemed that the stars themselves were listen- 
ing, while the massive piles of earth and stone, 
that stood out under the canopy of heaven like 
silent sentinels, seemed to be breathlessly 
awaiting some awful tragedy. 

A small party of men wended their way up 
the beautiful valley of the limpid Oolenoi, 
with Captain Eox at their head. Their feet 
were muffled, and under the mellow rays of 
the moon they looked like moving specters. 
They press forward noiselessly, toward the 
little cabin which we have described in a for- 
mer chapter. It is the home of Sam Houston, 
and the day that has just closed was the birth- 
day of his much-beloved little ’Cinda, July 
10th, 1863. The fond father sat dandling his 


( 116 ) 


The Arrest, 


117 


little innocent first-born on his knee, utterly 
unconscious of the pall of sorrow that was 
about to be thrown over his peaceful home, and 
of the mantle of suffering which was destined 
so soon to fall upon his prattling babe and 
innocent wife. 

The approaching party drew nearer and yet 
nearer, until at last they surrounded the house 
and called for Sam Houston. 

The inmates of that happy home exchanged 
significant glances. The dutiful, loving young 
wife grew pale and almost swooned. Her 
woman’s instinct told her what would be the 
final issue. With true woman’s spirit she as- 
sumed that it was largely her fault that Sam 
Houston was at home as a deserter. If he was 
shot, how could she bear the thought that his 
blood was on her hands. She had written to 
him repeatedly of her loneliness, and this may 
have induced him to leave the army. Such 
thoughts flashed through her mind as she 
stood confronting her husband. 

Brave Sam Houston — for if he was a desert- 
er, he was not a coward — in the meantime 


118 


The Girl in Checks, 


threw open the door, and gave himself up to 
Captain Fox and his men. He was pale, but not 
from a sense of fear; it came from thought of 
the anguish and grief that the incident was 
destined to beget in the heart of his devoted 
young wife. He thought not of himself, but 
of his wife and babe. He tried to comfort his 
weeping spouse; he bid her be strong for 
’Cinda’s sake. The scene was indeed an affect- 
ing one. When he embraced his prattling 
babe and loving wife for the last time his 
troubled heart heaved and swelled within his 
breast as if it would burst with grief, and the 
brave deserter gave vent to his feelings of an- 
guish in smothered, choking sobs. They 
were not the whimpering sobs of a pusillani- 
mous coward, but the magnanimous outburst 
of the feelings of one of nature’s noblemen. 

They produced a pair of handcuffs, but the 
brave mountaineer protested against such 
treatment. He begged the privilege of going 
with them as a free man, assuring them that 
he would make no effort to gain his liberty. 
They persisted, while he appealed touchingly 


The Arrest, 


119 


for his privilege as a man of honor. It was 
not obsequiousness; it was the protest of a 
brave, manly heart. It was, however, a pro- 
test which Captain Fox was incapable of ap- 
preciating; so mean and cowardly was his spir- 
it that he would have handcuffed a harmless 
boy. Magnanimity, of the lowest degree, is 
rarely, if ever, found to exist in a real coward- 
ly heart. 

They handcuffed Sam Houston. The wife 
saw it through her tears ; she heard the metal- 
lic click of the steel bracelets. It was a fatal 
sight and sound to the poor woman, for im- 
mediately her tears ceased to flow; grief, no 
longer able to find an outlet through sobs and 
tears, began to consume the brain. Those 
were the last tears that ever flowed from the 
eyes of the grief -burdened woman. Already 
a wild, cold, metallic look darted from her 
once soft, gray eyes. She was thenceforward, 
to the day of her death, a maniac. 

Her mind, in the twinkling of an eye, had 
swept forward and had unerringly anticipated 
the sad results of the fatal work of that night. 


120 


The Girl in Checks. 


A handcuffed husband riddled with bullets 
and bleeding at every wound was indelibly 
photographed upon her heart. Pressing 
her infant daughter to her bosom, and crouch- 
ing in a corner of the rude dwelling, she took 
no further notice of the little party of men 
which led her husband away through the 
broad valley to the little clump of bushes 
where their horses remained in waiting. 

As Captain Pox led his doomed prisoner 
across the broad, alluvial plain he thought of 
its value, set his heart upon it, and began to 
lay plans to possess it. 

Is there any thing in a name? There may 
not be, and yet how frequently it is the case 
that a name indicates the character, in some 
degree, of its possessor! The Bible, especial- 
ly the Old Testament, abounds in instances 
where the name of an individual is an index 
to his life and character.' Abraham, Naomi, 
Job, together with many others, are beautiful 
examples. 

It is true that these names grew out of 
prominent traits of character and certain en- 


The Arrest 


121 


vironments and circumstances; but may not 
the hand of God have been in it? Can we 
really refer any thing to mere chance? We 
know that God changed the name of Abram, 
and he did it for a purpose. He desired that 
the very meaning and associations of the name 
Abraham might beget within the hearts of all 
true believers a zeal and a profound admira- 
tion and love for his cause. 

What countenance does not blush with 
shame when the veil is lifted by the hand of 
God from that cave to which Lot and his two 
daughters fled at the destruction of the evil 
cities of the plain? Moab, the offspring of 
the incestuous crime, means “son of his fa- 
ther.” Trace that name through the annals 
of the divinely inspired records and see how 
the very name Moab stands related to all that is 
revolting. Was there no design on the part 
of God, in forever fastening that name on the 
descendants of the wicked daughter of Lot? 

May not God, who knows all things and 
who overrules all things, frequently flx cer- 
tain names on certain individuals? Abigail, in 


122 


The Girl in Checks, 


speaking to David of lier churlish husband, 
Nabal, said: “ As his name is so is he.” Christ 
likewise alludes to Peter, and thus leads us to 
think that there is at least something in a 
name. 

Of course this is mere speculation; but may 
we not speculate when the name of the char- 
acter whose black deeds mar these pages sug- 
gests it^ 

“Randal” is Anglo-Saxon, and means 
“house-wolf.” Randal Fox! How potently 
suggestive the very name! He had invaded a 
peaceful home, bound with iron fetters a brave 
man, and by this cowardly act he had dethroned 
the reason of a loving wife, thus bringing un- 
told suffering and injustice upon the innocent. 

But not yet satisfied, he combines the low, 
mean, cowardly spirit of the wolf with the cun- 
ning of the fox. 

As the little party pushed forward over the 
steep, winding road the Captain bid the oth- 
ers move onward and leave the prisoner in the 
rear with him, that they might have a few 
moments’ private conversation. 


The Arrest. 


123 


Ahab-like, the scheming Fox proposed to 
give Sam Houston, not “a better place” nor 
“its worth in money,” but his liberty, if he 
would convey to him a title-deed to the beau- 
tiful valley which they had just crossed. 

Sam Houston did not know of the condition 
of his wife. He had mistaken her apparent 
calmness at the time of his departure for one 
of composure, one of brave determination to 
make the best of her situation. Had he known 
her real condition, could he have seen her form 
crouching at that moment in the corner of the 
little log cabin, the issue of this proposal may 
have been very different to what it really was. 

But Sam Houston had already made a rec- 
ord as a brave, dutiful soldier. Up to the 
time of his desertion there had been nothing 
against him. He was conscious of that record, 
and notwithstanding he had left the army 
without a furlough, he believed that mercy 
would be granted him, and he had determined 
to meet the issue like the brave man that he 
was, re-enter the army, if his life was spared, 
and fight to its close, or till some bullet should 


124 


The Girl in Checks, 


send him to his eternal home. During his 
silent ride, thus far, he had called upon an all- 
wise and gracious God to witness these reso- 
lutions, and to give grace sufficient for their 
consummation. He had mentally committed 
himself and family to the keeping of a kind 
Providence; his resolutions and purposes were 
fixed. Therefore, when this criminal proposal 
greeted his ear, his manly form reared itself 
erect in the saddle, holy indignation flashed 
from every lineament of his bronzed face, 
and a look of chivalrous defiance darted from 
his large blue eyes, as he replied, in substance: 
“My grandfather’s own hand cut the virgin 
forest from that valley. His trusty rifle drove 
the wolves from the door of my little cabin 
home in my father’s childhood days, while my 
grandmother planted the stately cedars that 
girdle the little log house. There my father 
lived and died, and there shall be the home of 
my wife and child, though I fall in the front of 
the battle. Would you rob not only me, but my 
wife and child, of a home ? It is in your pow- 
er to take my life, but never my home.” 


The Arrest 


125 


Thus foiled, there was no scheming Jezebel 
to come to the rescue of this modern Ahab. 
But Fox’s heart was blacker than even Ahab’s, 
He grasped the breech of the heavy navy re- 
volver that hung at his side, and from its 
smoking muzzle flew the bullet that sent the 
handcuffed prisoner to his last resting-place. 
The poor man reeled and fell manacled to the 
ground. 

The pale moon itself seemed to shiver with 
fear. The silent mountain-peaks kept silence 
no longer, but there belched from one and 
then from the other the echo of that fatal shot, 
and at last the distant hills repeated in grief- 
burdened groans the dying sound. 

The incident was easily explained to Fox’s 
three companions, who hastened back to the 
bloody scene. “ He attempted to escape,” was 
the readily framed falsehood. 

They took up the lifeless body and bore it 
a few miles further; then they attached weights 
to it and sunk it in the pure waters of the 
beautiful Keeowee. The spring-like waters 
almost seemed to blush as they swallowed up 


126 The Girl in Checks, 

the lifeless trunk of the murdered man. The 
gurgling sweep of the river certainly seemed, 
there in the silence of the night, like the sup- 
pressed murmur of unseen spirits. But there 
upon the river-bank they swear to each other 
eternal secrecy. 

No fiery prophet appeared upon the scene 
of the awful tragedy with the announcement 
that a like fate awaited the foul murderer, as 
occurred in the case of Ahab when he took 
possession of humble Naboth’s home. But 
God is just; vengeance is his; he will repay. 

Crime is indeed progressive. The captain 
had shown the white feather at Manassas, but 
he slays his man at last, and alas! in cold blood. 
From cowardice to murder. Wisely, there- 
fore, does St. Peter place bravery first in his 
catalogue of Christian virtues. “Add to your 
faith virtue”— that is, courage. Convictions 
without courage to back them, whether in 
the Christian’s warfare or in the stern bat- 
tles of secular life, are one of the most fruit- 
ful sources of crime. 

If Captain Fox, who had once been recog- 


The Arrest, 


127 


nized as a good citizen, had possessed even 
that degree of what is sometimes called brute 
courage requisite to bear np his convictions 
as a Confederate soldier, his hands would nev- 
er have been stained with the blood not only 
of Sam Houston, but also of that of his inno- ^ 
cent wife. 


;<ii. 


SAM HOUSTON’S WIFE’S JOURNEY TO A LIVING 
TOMB, AND HER DEATH. 

HE bright morning sun of July 11, 1863, 



X was just beginning to throw long shad- 
ows across the beautiful valley of the Oolenoi 
when Sam Houston’s wife emerged from her 
cabin home. She pressed the innocent little 
’Cinda close to her bosom as she plodded her 
way along the steep, winding roads. She was 
bareheaded and bare-footed. In this condi- 
tion she wended her way for twenty miles 
along the serpentine roads to the nearest rail- 
way station. In time of peace she would have 
been apprehended and detained, but the read- 
er must remember that the entire country was 
in a state of ebullition. She was recognized, 
perhaps, by no one except Abe Grimshaw, who 
knew nothing then of the occurrence of the 
preceding night, and he did not even dream 
of her state of mind, thinking that she was 
simply going to the house of some neighbor- 


( 128 ) 


129 


Death of Sam Houston's Wife, 

ing mountaineer on some errand requiring 
great haste. But when the truth came to 
light that she was missing from home, then 
he remembered the wild look, perceivable even 
at the distance he was from her, that was on 
her face. 

The arrest of Houston had been so success- 
fully conducted that no one knew the particu- 
lars of it, nor even the fact itself, except those 
who had participated in it. The community 
realized the fact that both he and his wife 
were gone from home. The cause of their 
mysterious disappearance was not known in 
the community for some years after the fear- 
ful tragedy of the night when Houston was 
apprehended and so foully murdered. 

It is necessary, also, to say in this connec- 
tion that the death of Sam Houston gave the 
Confederacy, from that time forth, three good 
soldiers. The men who accompanied Bandal 
Fox on his bloody mission of murder and rob- 
bery on that eventful night became so dis- 
gusted with that department of service, and so 
conscience-smitten, that they forthwith gave 
9 


130 


The Girl in Checks. 


up their commissions as “ light duty men,” en- 
listed in active service, and fought to the close 
of the war. Two of them fell upon the bloody 
and historic field of Appomattox, and the other 
returned home, and on his dying bed, several 
years after the close of that bloody struggle, 
made a full confession of the horrible work of 
that night. 

I have digressed thus far in order to show 
how the matter of which I am writing came 
to light. To resume, however, the thread of 
my narrative: Sam Houston’s wife reached 
the little railroad station unmolested. She en- 
tered the coach of the Columbia-bound pas- 
senger train, and with the small sum of Con- 
federate money which her devoted husband 
had saved, and which he thrust into her hand 
on the eve of his departure, she paid her way 
through to the capital city of the State. 
Crouched down in one corner of the coach, 
pressing her infant close to her heaving bo- 
som, she was indeed a picture sad to look upon. 
The prattling infant, with its smiling face, un- 
conscious of the sorrows that filled its moth- 


Death of Sam Housto?i's Wife. 131 

er’s heart, afforded a strangely contrasting 
pictni'e to that of the cronching mother. 

As the deranged mother boarded the train 
Eandal Fox observed and recognized her, for 
he had returned from his bloody mission. He 
quickly read the result of his fearful crime; 
and, to add to its horror, there was an expres- 
sion of satisfaction on his smooth, milk and 
honey countenance. The foul game he was 
playing seemed destined now to be a success. 
O the depravity of fallen man! Who can 
fathom the depths to which he is capable of 
falling? Whatever may have been his reputed 
character prior to the war, whatever may have 
been his virtues as a peaceful, law-abiding 
citizen before that great struggle which tried 
the souls of men, we now behold Eandal Fox 
fallen to the utmost depths of criminality. 
He now, indeed. 

Hath into monstrous habits put the graces 
That once were his, and is become as black 
As if besmeared in hell. 

He too boarded the train, and sat in another 
coach, apparently unconcerned, and affable to 


132 


The Girl in Checks. 


a degree that was unusual even for him. He 
was determined to watch closely the issue of 
his deep-laid scheme. 

Once within the limits of the proud old cap- 
ital on the Congaree, whither the poor, de- 
mented wife supposed they had carried her 
husband, she rushed hither and thither, close- 
ly scanning every passing company of militia 
and every straggling soldier; but, disappoint- 
ed at every turn, the poor creature sat down 
in the street, having laid her infant upon the 
bare ground, whence her meaningless chatter- 
ing and hysterical laughter soon attracted the 
attention of the police. They apprehended 
her, and it is almost useless to state that she 
was committed to a cell in the lunatic asylum. 
A kind and compassionate lady took the in- 
fant to her home, and reared the little orphan 
to womanhood. 

One month after the committal to tho asy- 
lum the lifeless body of Sam Houston’s wife 
was consigned to a grave in the public ceme- 
tery in Columbia, S. C. 

Bandal Fox, during the time that had 


133 


Death of Sam Houston'' s Wife. 

elapsed since her committal to the asylum, had 
kept himself posted; and, as soon as he heard 
of the death of his helpless, demented victim, 
he looked upon his scheme as perfected. For 
in the interim of her incarceration in a living 
tomb he had gone to the lonely little cabin on 
the mountain-side, and had stolen therefrom 
the land documents of Sam Houston, knowing 
that there were no heirs living except the lit- 
tle infant, whose origin was now wrapped in 
profound mystery. Therefore, realizing that 
the property would, under a law of the State, 
be sold for taxes, he determined to doubly 
secure the rich valley upon which his heart 
was set. 

The reader has already anticipated the re- 
sult. He forged such alterations in the land 
documents as were necessary to secure the 
property. Furthermore, he allowed the prop- 
erty to be sold for taxes, and bought it at the 
sherifp’s sale for a nominal sum. Thus the 
property was secured by titles from the sher- 
iff of the county, and his forgery covered up, 
at least for a time. 


134 


The Girl in Checks, 


Surely Tom Thaxton spoke the truth when 
he uttered that sentiment relative to a future 
judgment. The penal codes of this world can 
never mete out justice to such criminals as 
this heartless murderer and robber. The di- 
vine fiat exercised in that awful injunction, at 
the last day, “ Depart, ye workers of iniquity, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels,” can alone dispense proper 
punishment to such sinners. 


©HAPTsi^ ;<in. 


HOW 'CINDA RETAINED HER NAME. 

No stream from its source / 

Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, 

But what some land is gladdened. No star ever rose 
And set, without influence somewhere. Who knows 
What earth needs from earth’s lowest creature ? No life 
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife, 

And all life not be purer and stronger thereby. 


— LueUe. 



IHE reader will, as a natural consequence, 


Ji feel an interest in the little orphan so 
cruelly deprived of father and mother. The 
name, “ ’Cinda,” was all that she inherited for 
a number of years from the fond parents who 
had fallen victims to the avarice of Kandal 
Fox. That name, however, was destined to 
cling to her. The lady who became her fos- 
ter-mother visited the poor, demented mother 
while in the asylum. Every means was used 
to get some possible clue to her name, but the 
reason of the poor woman was so completely 


( 135 ) 


136 


The Girl in Checks, 


dethroned that all measures failed to reveal 
who the poor creature was, or whence she 
came. However, at her last hour on earth she 
called for her infant. Eeason seemed to re- 
turn for a short period; and when the little 
creature was brought into the cell where the 
poor woman lay dying, she clasped it in her 
arms and imprinted many kisses on its little 
cheek, as she murmured its name — “ ’Cinda, 
’Cinda.” Then, pressing the babe closer to 
her bosom, she said: “They took you away 
from me, ’Cinda, but God has brought you 
back again. They killed papa, too, because he 
came back from the war to see us, but now we 
are going to see him. See, papa is coming 
for — coming for — for — ” 

These last words were uttered with great 
effort, and the last sentence was staid from 
completion by the hand of death. Thus the 
poor and doubly wronged mother fell back 
upon the pillow of her couch, cold in death. 
There was a smile on her features, wafting 
back to mortals the assurance of that ecstacy 
and joy that lit up her pure soul as it made 


How 'Cinda Retained Her Name. 137 

its advent into the unseen land of rest, and 
which was an earnest of everlasting happi- 
ness. 

Thus died the mother of ’Cinda Houston, 
leaving little evidence as to who she was. 
One thing, however, was evident to those 
who witnessed her death, and that was of 
very great importance in determining her 
identity. She was evidently the wife of a de- 
serter who had been apprehended and shot 
for his misdemeanor. Her wearing apparel 
and her dialect gave evidence of the fact that 
she was from the mountainous portion of the 
State. Besides these evidences pointing to 
the place of her nativity, the train officials re- 
membered bringing such a woman into Co- 
lumbia from the extreme western portion of 
the State. All of these evidences combined 
pointed unmistakably to the place of her na- 
tivity. 

’Cinda was, however, retained in the home 
of Mrs. Depew, the kind lady who had taken 
her when the poor mother was committed to 
the asylum. She was reared as one of Mrs. 


138 


The Girl in Checks, 


Depew’s own children, and grew up to be an 
accomplished and beautiful lady. When she 
came to young womanhood her foster-mother 
gave her a complete history of her past life, 
and also of the death of her mother and her 
dying utterances, together with other facts 
that she had gathered during the eighteen 
years that had passed by since that sad death 
in the asylum. 

Mrs. Depew thought best that ’Cinda should 
know of these mysteries that enshrouded the 
place of her nativity; for during those years 
she had gathered evidence not only confirm- 
ing the hypothesis that ’Cinda’s mother’s 
home was in the extreme north-western por- 
tion of the State, but also that there had been 
foul jplay in the death of ’Cinda’s father, and 
that the child had not only been robbed of fa- 
ther and mother, but also of a valuable valley 
on the Oolenoi. This intelligence was impart- 
ed to ’Cinda while her foster-mother was on a 
dying bed. 

The war, with its terrible consequences, to- 
gether with its foulest blot — the burning of Co- 


How 'Cinda Retained Her Name. 139 

lumbia — had deprived Mrs. Depew of all her 
property; yet the kind, benevolent matron had 
struggled, during all of these years, with the 
stern problems of life, as only devoted South- 
ern women knew how to struggle; and verily 
she had succeeded in rearing and educating 
creditably a worthy family, and now, at her 
departure from this world, she thought best, if 
’Cinda had really been robbed of her proper- 
ty, that she should know it, and, if possible, be 
put in a position to regain it. 

Without tiring the reader with all the de- 
tails, suffice it to say that after the death of 
Mrs. Depew ’Cinda Houston returned to the 
community whence came her mother, and at 
the time of my visit to Abe Grimshaw’s was 
gathering testimony to reclaim the home of 
her parents. 


©HAFTEi^ 


THE DISTILLERY, AND DEATH OF RANDAL FOX. 

T he reader will doubtless remember the 
blue column of smoke and the noisy cow- 
bell spoken of in a previous chapter. That 
column of smoke did not, indeed, ascend from 
the coals that slumbered on the hearth of that 
lonely cabin; neither was the cow-bell knocked 
accidentally from its resting-place on the man- 
tel-board. There were other fires from which 
the column of smoke arose, and that bell had 
its mission in this world. 

The death of Eugene Dudevant brought to 
light some hidden things connected with that 
cabin. Though he was an officer of the law, 
he was not free from violations of the law. 
He and Eandal Fox were intimate friends, 
and were partners in business. Underneath 
that cabin there was a considerable excavation, 
or cellar, in which was conducted an immense 
distillery. The flues of this distillery were 
( 140 ) 


The Distillery y and Death of Randal Fox, 141 

built up into the large chimney of the dwell- 
ing, passing back of the large, old-fashioned 
fire-place into the fine of the chimney; hence 
the great volume of smoke on that eventful 
morning when the writer was- accidentally 
ushered into the presence of the deaf old hag 
and the inquisitive fat hoy. The bell was 
thrown from its position on the mantel, and 
picked up by the palsied hand of the old wom- 
an, that its ready tongue might tell in unmis- 
takable language that a stranger was present, 
thus warning the operatives in the cellar to 
desist from any noise or conversation which 
might betray the existence of this hidden dis- 
tillery. 

The water necessary for distilling purposes 
was conveyed to the cellar through a buried 
pipe from a spring on the mountain - side. 
The pipe was so ingeniously fitted into the 
rock wall of the spring that it could not be 
discovered without tearing away the heavy 
stones that composed the wall. The natural 
declivity of the mountain, from the spring to 
the house, rendered it easy to bury the pipe so 


142 


The Girl in Checks, 


completely as to thoroughly conceal all traces 
of it. There was also a natural inclined plane 
from the house to the nearest point on the 
river, so that it was easy to give an outlet to 
the water, in the same manner, into the river. 
The arrangement was so complete, in every 
particular, that no one would have suspected 
the existence of the huge stills, even while 
standing on the floor of the building, and that, 
too, within a few inches of their great copper 
caps. 

Had it not been for the assassination of Eu- 
gene Dudevant these distilleries might have 
remained undiscovered to this day. Fox and 
Dudevant were partners in this illicit work, 
and when Dudevant was killed he had papers 
on his person not only revealing the existence 
of the distillery, but also showing that the 
entire plantation was mortgaged to him for 
money advanced to his partner. This was a 
revelation to the community at large, as well 
as to the officers, who had been Dudevant’s 
most intimate friends. 

The secluded yet beautiful valley of the 


The Distillery^ and Death of Randal Fox. 143 

Oolenoi had yielded thousands of bushels 
of corn annually, but Randal Fox’s wagons 
had, as the people thought, hauled the prod- 
uce to his home in one of the Piedmont coun- 
ties. But if those wagons had been closely 
inspected, the discovery would have been made 
that they contained whisky barrels, covered 
over with ears of corn to conceal them from 
view. 

Year after year this illicit manufacture had 
continued; year after year that blue column 
of smoke had ascended to the sky from the 
chimney of that lonely cabin ; year after year 
the products of the beautiful valley had been 
converted into that accursed fluid which for 
a number of years had spread crime, sorrow, 
and death through all the Piedmont region, 
as well as the lower counties of the old Pal- 
metto State. 

Who can estimate the amount of suffering 
and crime that Randal Fox was directly and 
indirectly responsible for during the twenty 
years that he tilled the beautiful valley of the 
Oolenoi? Is not crime amazingly progressive? 


144 


The Girl in Checks. 


If justice is ever vindicated, and punishment 
administered to poor crime-stained mortals, 
will there not have to be a court beyond this 
life, and a tribunal infinitely greater and 
wiser than man, before which transgressors 
must appear? Eternity alone will reveal the 
criminality of many who have lived and died 
on this earth respected by their fellow-men. 
Like the distillery under that crude cabin, 
there is much of man’s criminality that is 
under ground. We are startled sometimes 
when such disclosures as that about which we 
have been writing are made; but these reve- 
lations, fearful as they are, evidence the ex- 
istence of much that will never come to light 
this side of the final judgment of man. These 
disclosures are like yonder granite crag jut- 
ting from the mountain-side — its tremendous 
proportions are buried in the sands of the 
earth. 

What a day will that be when the hidden 
things, the awful crimes of men like Eandal 
Fox, shall bp brought to light, in all of their 
hideous and voluminous proportions, by the 


The Distillery^ and Death of Randal Fox, 145 

omnipotent hand of God! Truly it will be a 
day when the wicked will call upon the “ rocks 
and hills to fall upon them,” that they may no 
longer look upon the desolation and ruin their 
hands have wrought. 

There are, indeed, crises which determine, 
very frequently, the character of men forever. 
Randal Fox crossed the Rubicon when he exhib- 
ited that degree of cowardice that totally inca- 
pacitated him to fight at his country’s call and 
in her service. Thenceforth he made war upon 
innocence, and sent sorrow into the homes of 
his own countrymen. During the time that 
had elapsed from the close of the war until 
the time of which I am writing he had adroit- 
ly succeeded in covering up his crimes; and 
hence, notwithstanding his cowardice exhibit- 
ed in time of war, he had regained the respect, 
to some extent, of his fellow-citizens; but the 
death of Eugene Dudevant laid bare his wick- 
edness. 

A little band of revenue ofiicers, in obedi- 
ence to the demands of that law which Randal 
Fox had violated, surrounded his house and 
10 


146 


The Girl in Checks, 


demanded his person. The coward was hemmed^ 
and, knowing the final result, he resisted ar- 
rest, but a ball from an officer’s rifie sent the 
poor criminal reeling into eternity. 


©HAPTEl^ }CJ. 


THE GRAVE ON THE LONELY MOUNTAIN-SIDE. 

Those that can pity here 
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear. 

The subject will deserve it. 

O OME weeks after the death of Eugene Du- 
O devant I again reined up my horse in front 
of Tom Thaxton’s humble home. Louise met 
me at the door. There was still a shadow over 
her bright face. Some fearful sorrow con- 
nected with the death of the unfortunate rev- 
enue officer was evidently burdening her 
heart. Her grief, observable at the “Flat,” 
when the assassination of Dudevant was an- 
nounced, was not, therefore, simply the spas- 
modic outburst pf the sympathy of woman’s 
pure heart, for it was long-lived. 

It was a very great problem to me that Lou- 
ise should mourn for this lewd fellow. But 
I had determined to take the matter phil- 
osophically; for had not Victor Hugo declared 

( 147 ) 


148 


The Girl in Checks. 


that “woman is the conundrum of the nine- 
teenth century; we cannot guess her, but we 
will never give her up — no, never? ” And why 
should I wonder at any mystery that should 
greet me relative to that beautiful “Girl in 
Checks,” any way; or, as to that matter, at 
any thing which might occur at Tom Thax- 
ton’s home? For had I been asked to have 
christened that humble mountain cabin, I 
would have called it “ Labyrinthine.” 

My kind, though untutored, host’s tongue 
ran smoothly along, as usual, applying practi- 
cally whatever incident was alluded to, for he 
was wonderfully endowed with the gift of ap- 
plication. 

The excitement created by the murder of 
Dudevant had not yet passed away, and, as a 
matter of course, my host must speak of it in 
the line of his conversation, as well as impress 
us again with the truth that “ the way of the 
transgressor is hard.” But when he alluded 
to that sad incident I noticed that the shadow 
on Louise’s face deepened. Anon she stepped 
out of the room, to attend, as I supposed, to 


The Grave on the Lonely Mountain-side. 149 

some one of the many domestic matters that 
were committed to her care. 

I was, however, soon left alone; for these 
mountaineers look upon their preacher as one 
of their family, and feel but little hesitancy in 
leaving him without entertainment when their 
work demands attention. I was tired and felt 
drowsy from the fatigue incident to the long 
horseback ride which I had just completed. 
I remembered the spout in the back yard, 
and determined to bathe my face in its pure 
waters. 

When I had completed my ablutions I was 
seized with a desire to trace the little stream, 
from cascade to cascade, up to its very source. 
I was soon pursuing my little exploratory ex- 
cursion. I kept in a well-worn foot-way, that 
wound along the meandering banks of the 
streamlet. At length, about half a mile from 
the house, the pathway became bifarious. I 
turned into the left prong, which deflected 
into an almost perfect semicircle, as it led me 
around a few immense granite bowlders, and 
conducted me to the topmost stone, over which 


150 


The Girl in Checks. 


the streamlet made the longest perpendicular 
descent of any in its entire course. 

The scene that greeted my eyes when I 
reached the top of the declivity was truly fas- 
cinating. The elevation was such that I was 
enabled to count half a dozen little Piedmont 
towns in the distance. Farm-houses nestled 
down among the leafless trees, resembling, on 
account of their distance, so many toy-houses. 
The meandering course of one of the prongs of 
the head-waters of the beautiful Saluda could 
be traced for miles; ever and anon its clear wa- 
ters flashed in the sunshine like a molten cur- 
rent of pure silver. In the distance I could 
see the black columns of coal-smoke, as they 
belched from half a dozen massive engines on 
the Piedmont Air Line Kailroad, resembling 
as they rose into the air and expanded into a 
funnel-shaped cloud, so many cyclones sweep- 
ing leisurely along in the distance. 

The landscape before me resembled one 
level plateau of table-land, and finally seemed 
to gradually elevate itself until it kissed the 
clear, blue sky. But “ distance lends enchant- 


The Grave on the Lonely Mountain-side, 151 

ment to the view,” and the far-extended land- 
scape that stretched out before me, apparently 
so level, was really a broken, rugged country. 
But at the base of the clilfs upon which I 
stood there was really a plot of ground, em- 
bracing ten acres perhaps, which was perfect- 
ly level. It was one of nature’s magnificent 
parks. The undergrowth seemed to have been 
cut away at some time, and the level plateau 
was carpeted with great bunches of a kind of 
winter grass indigenous to the mountains. An 
imposing grove of chestnut-oaks, with straight 
trunks and bushy tops, covered the beautiful 
park. Their arrow-like trunks seemed like so 
many columns supporting a great net-work of 
leafless limbs and twigs. The tops of these 
trees waved to and fro in their January bar- 
renness, almost on a level with my feet. The 
scene to one not accustomed to look upon these 
lavish handiworks of God was simply enchant- 
ing. 

But the creative skill of God had not only 
provided a feast for the eyes in this far-ex- 
tended scene, but it had provided for the ear 


152 


The Girl in Checks. 


the sweetest strains that mortals can ever hope 
to hear this side of the Elysian fields of heav- 
en. It seemed that God had decreed that the 
voice of neither beast nor bird should vary the 
JEolian strains of the gurgling, soul-lulling 
melody of the splattering little cataract. 
Viewless hands, indeed, touched the strings of 
nature’s harp, and all nature besides stood in 
a listening attitude. Every voice was hushed, 
and every thing, save the singing waters, was 
as silent as the tomb. I stood transfixed to the 
spot, scarcely daring to move hand or foot, 
lest I should disturb nature’s harp. 

The spell, however, was soon broken by a 
voice that made me shudder. It seemed to 
have come right up out of the rock upon 
which I was standing. I listened breathlessly; 
I may have been mistaken. Again it greet- 
ed my ears-^half sob, half wail. In slow, 
measured, grief - burdened tones I heard the 
sentence: “O mother, mother, how lonely I 
am without you! ” 

I had believed myself to be any thing but 
superstitious, and yet, despite my effort to 


The Grave on the Lonely Mountainside. 153 

brace up my nerves, I found that a cold, clam- 
my perspiration was oozing from every pore of 
my body. And then, how out of place a groan 
here! Amid these sweet scenes there should 
be no discord. But how like life! No peace- 
ful cottage overgrown with flowering ever- 
greens, nor stately mansion of the rich, is ex- 
empt from the intrusions of the black-winged 
angel of grief. 

Again the sorrow-pregnant wail greeted my 
ear in slow, distinct syllables. I crept noise- 
lessly to the edge of the rock upon which I 
was standing, and looked down into the depths 
below me. The mysterious wail was no long- 
er a mystery. There, under the very shadow 
of the overhanging rock upon which I was 
standing, was a grave. Small marble slabs, 
set upright in the earth, marked the head and 
foot of the little green mound. Louise kneeled 
beside it, with her hands clasped over her 
bosom, as if in the attitude of prayer. 

When she arose from her position and stood 
erect I retreated, lest she should discover me. 
Turning quickly into the little pathway, I 


154 


The Girl in Checks, 


walked rapidly down the towering cliff. It 
was not my purpose to have her know that I 
had seen her, for eavesdropping, no matter if 
our position is determined by accident, is a 
thing which we do not like to have known if 
we are guilty. Hence I walked rapidly in the 
direction of the house; but just as I was near- 
ing the conjunction of the two paths, described 
in the beginning of this chapter, she came 
round a clump of hazel-bushes, meeting me, 
and we stood confronting each other just at 
the point where the two paths came together. 
Her face was flushed and her cheeks were 
tear-stained. I was embarrassed, of course, 
but not so completely but that I was able 
to feign surprise at meeting her. Who does 
not act the hypocrite sometimes? “I — I beg 
pardon. Miss Louise. I felt as if a little recre- 
ation would benefit me after my long ride. I 
came to inspect this beautiful cataract, not 
dreaming that I would find you here.” 

“ O ! ” she said, interrupting my little im- 
promptu speech, ‘‘ I come here every day. This 
is the dearest spot to me on earth. I will be 


The Grave on the Lonely Mountain-side. 155 

your guide, if you will accept my service, and 
we will go back to the little glen at the base of 
the falls, named by my precious mother, be- 
fore she died, the ‘Last Retreat.’” 

I was glad to accept her proposition, and 
we turned and walked up the winding path- 
way that led to that sacred spot, the “ Last 
Retreat.” I congratulated myself on the dis- 
covery which I had made and upon the good 
fortune that seemed likely to attend my tour 
of exploration. Could it be true that the 
“ Mystery of the Mountain Cabin ” was about 
to be solved? 

We at length reached the grave. The plain 
marble head-stone bore this simple epitaph i 

Sacred 

To THE Memory of 
Estelle Dudevant Dunbar. 

Born July 15 , 1835 ; 

Died May 20 , 1870 . 

Rest in Peace, Precious One; 

Louise Watches Your Grave. 

As I read this inscription Louise leaned 
heavily upon my arm, and wept as if her poor. 


156 


The Girl in Checks, 


grief-burdened heart would break. At last 
she spoke: “ One month ago to-day I came as 
usual to my mother’s grave. As I approached 
it I heard sobs and groans. I turned back 
and crept to the top of yonder overhanging 
rock, and as I looked down upon this spot I 
beheld a tall, masculine form bowing over my 
mother’s grave. He wept as if his heart were 
breaking. He called my mother’s name and, 
kneeling down, he kissed the cold marble slab 
upon which that name is written, and then in 
grief -stricken tones I heard him say: ‘OEs- 
te^e, Estelle, precious sister, pardon a wicked, 
unfeeling brother!’ I was tempted to rush 
from my hiding-place and make myself known 
to him, but something — O what was it? — 
something restrained me. He at last threw 
himself into the saddle and rode away through 
the woods. It was Eugene'Dudevant, my moth- 
er’s only brother, who, in searching for the 
distillery which he captured just one month 
ago, found my mother’s grave. It was the 
first time I ever saw him; alas! I shall never 
see him again. Twice my mother was driven 


The Grave on the Lonely Mountain-side, 157 

from home; indeed, she always seemed to be 
hiding from some fearful persecutor; and 
when she died she asked us to bury her here 
under the shadow of this rock. My uncle 
found her even here in this, the “Last Re- 
treat,” but, thanks to God, his heart had been 
made tender at last.” 

I led the weeping girl away to a moss-cov- 
ered stone, and bid her be seated, and there 
she unfolded to me the “Mystery of the 
Mountain Cabin.” 




THE VEIL LIFTED FROM THE MOUNTAIN CABIN. 

Gloom is upon thy lonely hearth, 

O silent house ! once filled with mirth. 

L OUISE’S story was an old one — as old, in- 
deed, as the Church of God itself. True 
religion has ever, as the history of Christiani- 
ty proves, evoked persecution in some phase or 
other. It is quite true that opposition has 
not always been bold and positive; yet hatred, 
in some form or other, has always manifested 
itself in opposition to genuine Christianity 
as a vital governing principle in the human 
heart. 

The humble itinerant missionary to the 
slaves of South Carolina had secured from 
Louis Dudevant permission to visit his plan- 
tation and preach to his negroes. These faith- 
ful and self-sacrificing men preached a pure 
and plain gospel to the unfortunate sons of 
Ham. 


( 158 ) 


159 


The Veil Lifted. 

Marm. Phillis, the old nurse of Louis Du- 
devant’s children, was a constant hearer of the 
missionary. Her heart had been frequently 
warmed and thrilled by the eloquent appeals 
and glad messages which the man of God de- 
livered. She looked forward to the time of 
his visitations with joy and gladness. She 
hummed Methodistic tunes as she went about 
her daily work in the old Dudevant mansion; 
therefore her aristocratic old master, who 
looked upon Methodism as a religion suited 
peculiarly to the condition of the poor and ig- 
norant, and as scarcely worthy of the consid- 
eration of the genteel and elite, frequently 
made jocular remarks about the zeal and de- 
votions of his old “ Methodist nurse.” 

But the mission of Methodism, even from 
Louis Dudevant’s stand-point, was and is the 
grandest mission that the world has ever seen. 
Had the wealthy rice -planter turned to the 
eleventh chapter of the gospel recorded by St. 
Matthew, and there considered the climacteric 
arrangement of our Saviour’s answer to the 
two disciples of John the Baptist, he might 


IGO 


The Girl in Checks. 


have placed a different estimate upon the 
heaven-born mission of Methodism: “ Go and 
show John again these things which ye do 
hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor 
have the gospel preached to them.” Glorious 
climax! The grandest mission that any indi- 
vidual or that any Church can ever engage in 
is to preach the gospel to the poor, for that 
was the ultimatum of Christ’s mission. 

But that system of religion which was only 
adapted to the poor and ignorant, in the opinion 
of Louis Dudevant, was destined to reach far- 
ther in its permeating effects than the hearts of 
the sable sons of Ham. It will one day perme- 
ate the very atmosphere of the Dudevant man- 
sion. That system of religious teaching which 
takes hold upon the substratum of society will 
finally shape the superstratum. In its progress- 
ive movements religion works upward. That 
which is nethermost conditions and determines 
that which is uppermost; therefore Christ en- 
tered society in his great ministerial work just 


161 


The Veil Lifted. 

where society begins to lose itself in rags, dis- 
ease, and poverty. Here, therefore, may be 
found the only true solution of the problem of 
the races. 

Already old Marm Phillis had told, with 
streaming eyes, to her young mistress the 
comforts that the sermons of the missionary 
had brought to her heart. Estelle had list- 
ened with interest to the joyful experiences of 
the old negress. How could she doubt the ut- 
terances of her faithful old nurse? There 
was a vacuum in her own heart which had 
never been filled, though she had sat under the 
ministry of the ablest preachers and most re- 
nowned bishops. 

Ah, experience is the citadel of Christianity! 
No insidious shaft like “ Eobert Elsmere ” can 
ever penetrate or demolish this vital factor of 
religion so long as the world stands and men 
know their wants. The human heart almost 
instinctively believes that what comforts and 
is good for one will comfort and console an- 
other. Such naturally were Estelle’s decisions 
as she listened to the warm, overflowing ex- 
11 


162 


The Girl in Checks. 


periences of Marm Phillis; yet she never 
dreamed that Methodism would one day be 
the instrument that would cause to be filled 
that aching void in her own bosom, and yet 
it was so. 

Estelle sat one morning in a great cushioned 
easy-chair, while Marm Phillis was engaged 
in dusting the furniture of her young mistress’s 
apartment. Ennui had seized upon the very 
soul of the fair young mistress of “The 
Oaks,” and she sat brooding over the great 
lack of something in her heart without which 
life was not a pleasure. She looked up from 
the bright beam of sunshine that had been 
dancing upon the carpet, and asked: “Marm 
Phillis, what makes you always joyful and 
happy?” 

The old negress’s countenance beamed with 
the divine afflatus that filled her humble heart 
as she replied: “De missionary told me how 
to get de peace of God. I trusted Christ, an’ 
he saves me, missus.” 

“He saves me” kept flashing through Es- 
telle’s mind, as she sat there with a heart that 


163 


The Veil Lifted. 

was burdened to its utmost capacity. “He 
saves me ” — “ can it be true that she knows it? ” 
she queried in her own mind. “ O,” thought she, 
“ I would give the world for that knowledge, 
were it possible.” She determined, as she sat 
there in the great arm-chair and almost envied 
the joy that seemed to fill the old slave’s heart, 
to hear the missionary for herself. 

At last the day came when service would be 
held by the missionary for the slaves of the 
Dudevant plantation. Estelle, accompanied by 
the overseer’s wife and daughter, and her 
faithful old nurse and attendant, Marm Phil- 
lis, entered the little white- washed plantation 
chapel. It was a strange spectacle; the sable 
audience showed their white, ivory-like teeth 
between their parted lips, and nodded admir- 
ingly as their young mistress crossed the 
threshold of the building. The most com- 
fortable pew was quickly vacated for the priv- 
ileged party, and they were seated, Estelle for 
the first time in her life, to hear a Methodist 
preacher. 

The missionary entered the crude pulpit 


164 


The Girl in Checks. 


and began the service. He was tall, slender, 
clean-shaven, and neatly attired in a close-fit- 
ting black suit. He had a handsome, benev- 
olent face; indeed, he was a veritable Meth- 
odist preacher of that day. His emphasis, 
enunciation, gesticulation, and general deport- 
ment and bearing were such as impress one 
with the fact of good breeding and clever- 
ness. His sentences were short, simple, almost 
axiomatic, yet full of tenderness and pathos. 
As was common in that day, and which ought 
to be common now, the preacher discoursed 
upon one of the cardinal doctrines of the Holy 
Scriptures — “ the direct witness of the Holy 
Spirit.” As he proceeded in his discourse he 
grew sublimely eloquent, without losing any 
of the force of his logic. Estelle’s eyes were 
riveted upon him, and her heart, like Wesley’s 
while hearing Luther’s preface to the Epistle 
to the Komans, was strangely warmed.” The 
tears of joy and gladness streamed down her 
fair cheeks ; she felt that the aching void in her 
heart had been filled by the Spirit of God, and 
she could now verify the sweet assurance of 


The Veil Lifted. 165 

which Marm Phillis had so frequently told 
her. 

When the minister had concluded his dis- 
course and stepped down from the crude pul- 
pit Estelle met him, grasped his hand, and, 
while tears of joy streamed down her cheeks, 
she told him of the overflowing joy she felt in 
her heart. The all-cleansing blood of Jesus 
had washed another heart white as snow. All 
of Estelle’s former ideas of religion had been 
obliterated in a moment. She now felt for the 
first time in her life a sympathy for all man- 
kind. The great leveling influence of the gos- 
pel of Christ had accomplished its grand, re- 
newing, and all-healing work. That heart, 
which ever afterward proved a faithful recep- 
tacle of divine truth and of the Holy Ghost, 
now spontaneously acknowledged one common 
Fatherhood, as well as one common brother- 
hood of humanity. 

As the beautiful girl stood pressing the 
hand of that faithful servant of God, surround- 
ed by scores of the ebony-hued slaves of her 
father, each one moved to tears of gladness on 


166 


The Girl in Checks. 


their young mistress’s account, the scene was 
an affecting one. 

The transcendent beauty of Christianity is 
that it bridges every chasm, pulls down every 
wall, and spans every dark and unexplored val- 
ley whereby humanity is separated. It begets 
sympathy of that broad kind which takes in 
every class and condition of mankind. 

But what will stern, skeptical old Louis Du- 
devant say when the knowledge of this won- 
derful transformation of his daughter’s heart 
comes to his ear? Without thinking of the 
cold, skeptical nature of her father, or of the 
little piece of innocent indecorum of which 
she had been guilty by attending service in 
the little plantation chapel, Estelle hastened 
into the presence of her father, clasping him 
in her arms. With streaming eyes and a voice 
full of emotion she told him of the precious 
work of God in her heart. 

Louis Dudevant stood aghast! He could 
scarcely believe his eyes or ears. Could it be 
possible that his daughter had so far forgotten 
her rearing as to violate the laws of modesty 


167 


The Veil Lifted, 

by leaping over the very proprieties which 
should have restrained her, thus bringing a 
reproach upon the proud name of Dudevant 
by imbibing what he termed the frenzy and 
animal excitement of Methodism? Ah! he had 
never dreamed that his fair daughter would 
ever become the depository of such a religion. 
He thrust her from him as he would have 
spurned a brute, while he writhed under the 
wound which his pride had received. But he 
was helpless; he could not undo that which 
God had wrought. Days and weeks passed 
away; but his anger, instead of abating, grew 
on him; for Louis Dudevant had attained 
that age wherein such temperaments as his 
know no relenting or forgiveness. He was de- 
termined to conquer, even at the sacrifice of 
paternal love. 

The missionary was summarily prohibited 
from ever again entering the little plantation 
chapel at “ The Oaks.” The regular inflowing 
of merry visitors was checked by the stern, 
cynic-like reception they received from Louis 
Dudevant, and by the declaration of Estelle’s 


168 


The Girl in Checks. 


indisposition to receive company. Thus pain- 
ful weeks and months passed away; home at 
“The Oaks” was dying, dying forever. Eu- 
gene was in Europe; so that Louis Dudevant 
alone, with stern face and rigid features, paced 
the silent apartments of his palatial home. 

Homey' did I say? 

He entered the house — his home no more 
(For without hearts there is no home), and felt 
The solitude of passing his own door 
Without a welcome. 

Harm Phillis went noiselessly about her 
daily vocation, denied even the privilege of 
humming her favorite songs. But there was 
another inmate virtually confined within one 
of the upper chambers. Estelle was indeed an 
alien in her own father’s home. Marm Phil- 
lis was the only being from whom the virtually 
imprisoned maiden received any sympathy. 
But amid her severest agonies there was a 
source of never-failing consolation more glo- 
rious indeed than those comforting influences 
which spring from a consciousness on the part 
of the sufferer that they have the sympathies 


The Veil Lifted, 169 

of their fellow-beings, for the Spirit of God 
was there. 

Time and again the beautiful girl had im- 
plored an interview with her father. The fair 
prisoner for Christ’s sake loved her only par- 
ent fervently, and to effect a reconciliation 
was willing to make any sacrifice save that of 
giving up her sincere trust in Christ. But the 
inflexible father turned away from her entreat- 
ies, and expressly declared that unless his 
daughter turned completely away from those 
principles of religion which she had imbibed, 
and again became the fair belle of every ball 
at “The Oaks ” and elsewhere — the free, cheer- 
ful, pleasure-seeking maiden of the past — she 
must remain contented forever with the envi- 
ronments which her own folly had imposed 
upon her — an alien in her father’s home. Such 
were the bitter threats with which all of her 
entreaties were met. She must fill a tomb 
while yet alive, and live a living death. 

The proposition was one at which every im- 
pulse of nature rebelled. The beautiful pris- 
oner could never consent to sacrifice the truth 


170 


The Girl in Checks. 


of divinely-begotten convictions; neither did 
she deem it a duty to bow, since she was a 
woman of lawful age, to the unyielding and 
oppressive demand of her father, which grew, 
primarily, out of that pride which was begot- 
ten solely by his position in society, so-called. 
Hence Estelle determined to step out from 
under the shadow of the paternal roof, and 
face the problem of making a living for her- 
self and with the labors of her own hands. 
That determination was executed, and that, 
too, without compromising the principles of 
that holy cause which had been planted with- 
in her heart. For under such circumstances 
one is justified in thrusting into the back- 
ground home, the tender ties of relationship, 
and, indeed, every thing sublunary, for the 
sake of that One w^ho has within himself en- 
dured so much for us. 


©HA1®T£i^ ;xun. 


THE ADVENT INTO THE WORLD. 

Farewell, my home, my home no longer now, 
Witness of many a calm and happy day; 

And thou, fair eminence, upon whose brow 
Dwells the last sunshine of the evening ray. 

ARM PHILLIS had carried a heavy 



JLVL heart since Estelle had made known to 
her the determination to leave the paternal 
roof; while Lonis Dudevant had shown no 
signs of relenting in his severe and almost in- 
human course. 

Estelle ascertained that Tony, the old plan- 
tation boatman, would in a few days make his 
monthly trip down the great Pee Dee to his- 
toric old Georgetown. This was Estelle’s op- 
portunity, and she firmly decided to use it. 

When, therefore, the day arrived for the de- 
parture of the boat she walked down from her 
room and going into the presence of her fa- 
ther boldly announced to him, for the last time, 
her intention of leaving the home of her child- 


( 171 ) 


172 


The Girl in Checks. 


hood unless he would consent to grant her 
that love and respect a child might justly de- 
mand from her parent. 

The proud, stern father looked for a mo- 
ment into her beautiful face, and there he 
read a fixed determination plainly written in 
every lineament of her countenance. One 
of three things he ought to have known would 
now necessarily take place: the proud father 
must retract his course of harsh and cruel 
treatment, use physical force in restraining 
his daughter from her purpose, or lose her 
forever from his palatial home. 

He was too proud and unyielding to ac- 
knowledge a fault, even if he were led to see 
his error. He could not stoop to physical re- 
straint, for he laid some claim to being an old- 
school gentleman, so that the last course alone 
was left him. 

His pride was wounded, and there was no 
balm to heal the ugly scar; hence he drew his 
tall form up to its height, frowned a bitter, 
sarcastic smile, and bid his only daughter 
begone from his presence forever. 


The Advent into the World. 173 

Estelle therefore stepped out from under 
the shadow of her father’s home to share the 
bitterness of the cold, unsympathizing world — 
a living example of the immortal sentiments 
of the sweet singer of Methodism when he 
sung: 

“Jesus, I my cross have taken, 

All to leave, and follow thee ; 

Naked, poor, despised, forsaken. 

Thou, from hence, my all shalt be. 

Perish, every fond ambition. 

All I’ve sought, or hoped, or known ; 

Yet how rich is my condition! 

God and heaven are still my own.” 

By the way of Georgetown and through the 
“City by the Sea,” she reached Columbia. 
She was not an entire stranger in the quiet 
old capital on the Congaree, and therefore de- 
termined to visit at once an acquaintance and 
make known her condition. But there is a 
special providence that shapes the destiny of 
every child of God. 

She had scarcely left the threshold of the 
old “South Carolina Depot,” when she met the 
missionary who had so often preached to her 


174 The Girl in Checks. 

father’s slaves and had been instrumental in 
her conversion. 

He who had sympathized with the poor, de- 
graded negro to that degree that he was hum- 
ble enough to receive an appointment from 
the bishop to the slaves of his native State, 
teaching them the way of life in obedience to 
the wishes and plans of the immortal Capers, 
was certainly sympathetic enough to protect 
and befriend Estelle Dudevant, one of his 
spiritual children. 

When she related to him her sorrowful ex- 
perience he immediately conducted her to the 
home of one of his friends, and there obtained 
for her the situation of governess of the chil- 
dren of this plain Methodist family. In her 
new home she was happy, notwithstanding 
the bitter trials of her life. 

She had indeed counted all things as but 
dross for the inestimable privilege of serving 
Christ the Lord, and in return God had re- 
warded her faith with the abundant bestowal 
of the riches of his grace and Holy Spirit. 
It is true that, viewing her from a human 


The Advent into the World, 175 

stand-point, her acts may have been open to 
criticism; but when looked at from a divine 
point of view she was truly wise in all she did. 
Through a life of keenest self-denials and bit- 
terest cross-bearings she reached the crown. 


©HAPTEl^ }<UUl 


A WIDOW DRIVEN FROM HOME. 

Peace hath her victories, 

No less renowned than war. 

STELLE was employed in the home of 



J i Archie Grant as governess. This was a 

humiliating position for a Dudevant, but the 
conquests of divine grace are mightier and 
grander in every way than the victories gained 
by human strength and through the prowess 
of earthly powers and equipage. 

When the Confederate forces invaded Penn- 
sylvania General Lee could not hope to keep 
his communications open to the rear; hence 
his staff officers said: “ In every battle we fight 
we must capture as much ammunition as we 
use.” Thus cut off from the store-houses of 
the rear, the invasion was necessarily self-sus- 
taining. So it is with the soul consecrated to 
God. The great supply stores of the past are 
forever closed, and the devoted child of God 


( 176 ) 


177 


A Widow DrivcAi from Home, 

feels his utter present dependence on the sus- 
taining power of God’s grace. The victories 
won equip for still greater achievements. 

Although Estelle had left so comfortable a 
home, together with all the dear associations 
of former days, she was happy in her new re- 
lationship. In the pious family of Archie 
Grant she had every help conducive to god- 
liness. 

It is true that her position was a trying one; 
for God has never promised to lead his chil- 
dren out by a way in which there are no trials 
and crosses. The cross and the crown are in- 
separably linked together. Through the fel- 
lowship of suffering the true child of God is 
lifted into the immediate presence of the 
world’s Cross-bearer. “In his name” and 
“ for his sake ” are written in living characters 
over every trial and every crushing sorrow 
that are thrown across his or her pathway. 
These magic sentences transform crosses into 
crowns, and raise the humble believer into the 
fullest sympathy with the great life-work of 
our exalted Redeemer. God does not keep his 
12 


178 


The Girl in Checks. 


children from trouble, but he keeps them in 
all the trials and calamities incident to this 
preparatory existence. “As he is, so are we 
in this world.” Whatever sorrows, therefore, 
may have filled the heart of devoted Estelle 
on account of being disowned and disinherited 
by a cruel and hard-hearted father, there was, 
nevertheless, to her a stream of never-failing 
consolation fiowing continually from the sweet, 
soul-refreshing promises of God’s word. 

When the martyrly young woman had 
stepped out from under the shadow of the pa- 
ternal roof at “The Oaks,” the cruel frown 
of a father resting like a black storm-cloud 
hanging over a drooping flower upon her 
head, there was nothing left her save her 
unshaken confidence in the bare word of her 
Father above. But was not that enough? 
Had not the Saviour of men spoken definitely 
when he said: “And every one that hath for- 
saken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or fa- 
ther, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, 
for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundred- 
fold, and shall inherit everlasting life?” 


179 


A Widow Driven from Home, 

When the persecuted “ child of a King” en- 
tered upon her duties as governess in the 
home of Archie Grant had not God even then 
paid her one hundred cents on the dollar? 
Had he not given her a home and a father and 
mother minus persecution and frowns? Had 
he not surrounded her with the very sunshine 
of heaven? 

Amid the genial Christian influences which 
God had throwm around her she felt, there- 
fore, a satisfaction which can only be appreci- 
ated by those who have trodden the rugged 
pathway of pungent sorrow, and who have 
found it suddenly illuminated by the rays of 
divine light which have penetrated the fast 
gathering clouds and which have come down 
with their mellow, dove-like descent and soul- 
cheering splendor upon the grief-burdened 
heart. 

It would be uninteresting, perhaps, to 
trace the entire history of Estelle Dudevant 
while an inmate of this quiet, Christian 
home. It is enough to say that she re- 
mained uncompromisingly loyal to her God, 


180 The Girl in Checks, 

and day by day she was supremely happy in 
his service. 

Just a year prior to the great civil struggle 
between the States she was married to a 
young merchant in the capital city — Clarence 
Dunbar. One child, the winsome Louise, was 
the fruit of this union. 

The call for volunteers in defense of South- 
ern rights came. Clarence Dunbar was a pa- 
triotic son of Carolina. He felt his country’s 
need, and gave himself to her service. 

It was a sad scene, indeed, when the young 
captain pressed his loving wife and prattling 
infant to his heaving bosom for the last time, 
a scene— and may it never be repeated!— which 
occurred in many homes. North and South. 

Alas! one year after that event Clarence 
Dunbar, leading forward his men, fell in the 
thickest of the fight. A soldier of the ‘‘Val- 
ley Campaign,” they buried him. 

Far up the lonely mountain-side, 
in the still hours of the nighty 

His coffin but the mountain soil. 

His shroud Confederate gray. 


181 


A Widow Driven from Home. 

Ah! sad coincident! as I sat listening to 
Louise’s melancholy story I took it in; there 
was another “Last Ketreat,” a few hundred 
miles away on the steep declivities of this 
great mountain-range — a Confederate soldier’s 
grave. 

What fights he fought, what wounds he wore, 

Are all unknown to fame; 

Remember, on his lonely grave 
There is not e’en a name. 

But God has recorded his victories and 
watches his last resting-place, therefore 

Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll, adown thy rocky glen; 
Above thee lies the grave of one of Stonewall Jackson’s 

men. 

In the fair capital of Carolina a brave sol- 
dier’s wife anxiously awaited tidings from the 
bloody battle-field. Tidings came, but only 
to clothe her in the mantle of mourning. She 
wept and kissed through her tears the smiling 
infant. She struggled amid sorrow and want 
for three years. 

The storm-cloud of war grew blacker and 
yet blacker. Onward came the vast column 


182 


The Girl in Checks. 


of blue. Atlanta, the great store-house of 
the Southern Confederacy, fell. Carolina’s 
fair yet hated capital was doomed. 

The frail, sorrowing widow, with true wom- 
an’s instinct, apprehended the fearful ravages 
of that enemy before which her beloved Clar- 
ence had fallen; hence, as the black and smok- 
ing trail of Tecumseh Sherman neared Colum- 
bia, upon which he had determined to pour 
all of his pent-up hate, she fled to a place of 
safety. 

Onward the creaky old train bore the sor- 
rowful soldier’s wife and child, until, as the 
sun began to sink behind the western hills, the 
dim outlines of the far-famed Blue Kidge 
loomed up against the far-away horizon. Hav- 
ing reached at last the terminus of the railroad, 
the grief -burdened mother pressed onward by 
private conveyance. Like the trembling roe 
of the forest, chased by yelping hounds, this 
sorrow-smitten child of God sought some 
mountain nook to hide herself away from the 
apparently ever-pursuing train of disaster. 
That quiet resting-place she found in the home 


183 


A Widow Driven frmn Home. 

of Tom Thaxton, and at last beneath the 
overshadowing rocks of the “ Last Ketreat.” 

The mystery of the mountain cabin is solved. 
Will the providence of God evolve justice for 
the beautiful “Girl in Checks?” 


©HAPTEl^ 


A BACKWOODS DIVINE ON BAPTISM. 

HE second visit to Tom Thaxton’s had 



i lifted that veil of mystery which hung 
over his humble home, but the third stop at 
his hospitable board brought news of ap- 
proaching conflict. The deep mutterings of 
the gathering hosts of “Hard-shells” had al- 
ready proclaimed the very near approach of 
battle. 

I had, as a loyal Methodist preacher, inci- 
dentally spoken of the duty of infant baptism 
in my last sermon at the “Flat,” and now the 
very atmosphere was rife with tumult and fly- 
ing missiles. 

“ Baptism is a sign and a seal of God’s cove- 
nant with his people. Our children either be- 
long to that covenant or they do not. If they 
do not, then their salvation is impossible. But 
that they do is specifically and directly re- 
vealed. ‘ The promise is unto you and to your 


084 ) 


A Bachvoods Divine on Baptism, 185 

children.’ If, therefore, they belong to that 
covenant, they have a right to both the sign 
and seal of that covenant, and none should 
dare withhold it from them.” 

This was the utterance that I had made rel- 
ative to infant baptism, and I had remarked 
also relative to the mode of baptism: “John 
the Baptist sprinkled the multitudes that 
flocked to the baptism of repentance, and 
that sprinkling, or affusion, was the mode of 
baptism under the apostolic dispensation 
amounted to a clear and undeniable demon- 
stration. For supposing John the Baptist to 
have baptized by immersion, it would have 
taken many months to have baptized all who 
came to his baptism. He had no assistance 
whatever. Therefore can we believe that he 
stood waist-deep in the cold waters of the 
Jordan for that length of time? Would such 
not have been an impossibility? Would it 
not have been death to John? 

“Again, that he baptized by affusion, or 
sprinkling, is positively revealed. John said: 

* I indeed baptize you with water unto repent- 


186 


The Girl in Checks, 


ance: but he that cometh after me is mightier 
than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: 
he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and 
with fire.’ (Matt. iii. 11.) 

“Now there is quite a difference in baptiz- 
ing in water and with water, but it is specific- 
ally revealed that John baptized ivith water. 

“Again, it must be admitted that whatever 
is the meaning of the word baptize in the^ first 
clause of the text, that also is the meaning of 
the same word in the last clause of the text? 

“Now St. Luke in the eleventh chapter of 
the Acts of the Apostles, fifteenth and six- 
teenth verses, tells us definitely what the 
meaning of the word is in the last clause of the 
text relative to the mode of baptism: “And as 
I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell upon 
them, as on us at the beginning. Then re- 
membered I the word of the Lord, how that 
he said, John indeed baptized with wa- 
ter; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy 
Ghost.” Therefore not even the death of 
Christ for the sins of the world is more pos- 
itively revealed than the mode of baptism. 


A Backwoods Divine on Baptism. 187 

These deliverances of mine had set all that 
mountain region aflame with controversy. As 
I reined up in front of Tom Thaxton’s gate 
the first object that I saw was his tall, an- 
gular form approaching me from the barn. 
“ They are arter you,” he said as he came with- 
in speaking distance. “Parson Pondduck 
says there an’t no covenant now. He ’lowed 
las’ Sunday in his sarmon ove’ at B’ilin’ 
Springs that God did make a covenant with 
Abraham, an’ that that was all the covenant 
God had ever made; an’ he said that covenant 
had been dead too long to talk about. He 
said the Bible wa’n’t no covenant nohow, but 
a testament, an’ he showed us that ‘ Testament * 
was printed on the back of his Bible.” 

I must confess that I was at a loss to know 
what argument my opponent would make of 
this, hence I listened with the greatest inter- 
est as my humble parishioner rehearsed the 
utterances of this backwoods divine : “ ‘ Now,’ 
sez ee, ‘why does God call the Bible a testament? 
Beca’se it testifies to what we must do to be 
saved. Don’t it tell us that if Christ washed 


188 


The Girl in Checks. 


his disciples’ feet, we ought to wash one 
another’s feet? ’ It was foot-washin’ day over 
at B ilin’ Springs las’ Sunday, you know. I 
think folks oughter wash their feet, but ’pears 
powerful strange to me that they wait till they 
get to the church to do it. Tell you what, ’twas 
a powerful sight to see ’em scrubbin’ away there 
in the church. Mary Jane Jackson — that’s a 
member over at the “Flat,” you know — got up 
close for to see, an’ spread down her Sunday 
shawl for the baby to sleep on, an’ Deacon 
Jones turned over a foot-tub of water on the 
chile an’ shawl. That chile’s a Methodist 
shoar as Betsy is my old ’oman’s name. 
’Bear’d to me you might ’a’ hearn that baby 
holler frum here clean to the “ Flat.” But as 
I was a-sayin’ ’bout the sarmon, sez ee: ‘Don’t 
the Bible testify that our Saviour went 
down into the river Jordan? Don’t it tes- 
tify that “thus it becometh us to fulfill all 
righteousness?” Now I would like to know 
how,’ sez ee, ‘ a little baby is a-goin’ down into 
the water an’ a-comin’ up outen the water.’ 
0 you just oughter been thar! He’s done 


A Backwoods Divine on Baptism. 189 

funeralized all the Christians — Methodist, 
Missionary Baptist, an’ all ’ceptin’ them that’s 
Hard-shells.” 

This short preface, delivered as he stood 
holding my bridle-reins, was enough to lead 
me to believe that there was a treat in store 
for me after supper. I felt assured that I 
would learn much of polemic theology before 
the time came to stow me away in the little 
back room for the night. And O how my 
heart yearned for the enlightening influences 
of education and the gospel of Christ to be 
spread over these dark coves and frowning 
peaks! 

Is it at all surprising that the Mormon eld- 
er on his missionary, or rather proselyting, 
tours through these benighted regions should 
make converts to his abominable creed? Nay, 
verily! 

So after supper was over I asked my host to 
give me a synopsis of Parson Pondduck’s ser- 
mon. 

“O he didn’t say nuthin” bout them big 
fureign words, for you know he’s an onlarnt 


190 


The Girl in Checks, 


man. But he ’lowed he wer’nt afraid of some 
preachers who had rubbed their back agin a 
college wall, if they did have a prophet’s name. 
Sez ee: ‘My lamin’ an’ wisdom comes down 
from above, an’ all I have to do to preach the 
everlastin’ gospel is to open my mouth and 
the Holy Ghost fills it.’ ” 

Here Betsy Thaxton chimed in: “Well, if 
the Holy Ghost put them words into Parson 
Pondduck’s mouth, he must ’a’ been funnin’; 
fur anybody that reads the Scriptur’ knows 
that it did not sound like Scriptur’ doctrine.” 

This apparently irreverent remark was cer- 
tainly to the point. I was ready to believe 
with her that the ever blessed Spirit of truth 
would in nowise own such mutilations of the 
Holy Book. 

Her remark served one purpose, however: 
it gave Tom Thaxton time to fill and light the 
old clay pipe that had, to all appearances, 
done many days’ honest labor. 

Thus equipped, my host gave me a repro- 
duction of that part of Parson Pondduck’s 
sermon which touched especially upon the 


A Backwoods Divine on Baptism. 191 

doctrine of baptism and “ the final persever- 
ance of the saints.” 

As nearly as I can reproduce it on paper it 
ran something like this: 

“‘O my breethren, I went out behind my 
garden fur to pray er, an’ while I wus a-pray- 
in’ er I hearn somethin’ a-comin’ along through 
the woods te-tip-e-te-tip er, te-tip-e-te-tip er; 
an’ what do you reckon it wus er? A poor 
little fawn er. On it went er, down towards 
the river er, te-tip-e-te-tip er, te-tip-e-te-tip er, 
an’ ker-splunge it went into that liquid grave 
er, an’ straight it went to the tother side er, 
safe er, O my breethren, safe er. Then I 
hearn somethin’ a cornin’ along to-bow-wow- 
wow, to-bow-wow-wow er. An’ O my breeth- 
ren, what do you reckon that wus er? It wus 
Bill Davis’s old hound, Tige er, close on trail 
of that poor little fawn er. He went on down 
to the cold water’s aige er, to-bow-wow-wow er, 
to-bow-wow-wow er, but he could not stem 
that cold current er. He ran up an’ down the 
bank er, to-bow-wow-wow er, etc. Now, my 
breethren, what does all this mean er? Why 


192 


The Girl in Checks. 


the little fawn is the poor sinner er. He 
comes along, te-tip-e-te-tip er, te-tip-e-te-tip er, 
an’ ker-splnnge he goes down into the cold, 
watery grave er, an’ out on the other side er, 
safe er. O yes, my breethren, safe er, that’s 
the w’ord, safe er. Old Satan, like Bill Davis’s 
old Tige er, comes along close on his trail er, 
to-bow-wow-wow er, to-bow-wow-wow er; but 
O my breethren, he can’t stem that cold cur- 
rent er, he just runs up an’ down the bank er, 
to-bow-wow-wovT er, to-bow-wow-wow er, safe 
er; yes, that’s the word, safe er, forevermore 
er. Now, my breethren, we uns are the onli- 
est ones that have done as God’s word testi- 
fies we should do, an’ we uns alone can expect 
to be saved er, beca’se we have come out from 
among them er, an’ we have thusly left the 
devil on the other side er. Safe er. O yes, 
my breethren, safe er.’ ” 

Such, indeed, were the Ciceronian cadences 
which my remarks on baptism had evoked. I 
had disturbed the peace of Zion, and had 
been left, therefore, on the other side in com- 
pany with old Tige as a punishment for my 


A Backwoods Divine on Baptism. 193 

very untimely deliverances on the subject of 
water baptism. But I am glad to know that 
I had a defender present on that occasion in 
the person of Sallie Flinn. 

“Well you just oughter hearn the argufy- 
ing after the sarmon was over. Some was al- 
most fightin’ mad. I didn’t say a word, but 
it ’peared to me that Satan would be powerful 
glad to have a chance to plunge into that cold 
stream. Me an’ Parson Pondduck rid off to- 
gether, bein’ that we went the same road. I 
didn’t let on that his sarmon hurt me at all. 
So we came on a-talkin’ ’bout the craps an’ 
one thing an’ other, till ’fore long we overtuck 
Sallie Flinn. I seed Sallie was as mad as a 
wet hen. I know’d Sallie, and know’d Parson 
Pondduck was goin’ to ketch it. Sez I : ‘ How- 
dy Sallie, how’s all? ’ She ’lowed: ‘We uns are 
all well, ’ceptin’ Bill Davis’s old Tige is close 
on our trail, an’ we han’t quite made up our 
minds to jump into the liquid grave.’ Sez she: 

‘ I always knowed old Tige was powerful bad 
after sheep, but I never yet hearn of a sheep 
a-takin’ water, if a poor little fawn did.’ An’ 
13 


194 


The Girl in Checks. 


sez she: ‘Parson Ponddnck, you have added to 
the Scriptur’ to-day, an’ I’d hate to be in your 
shoes. For the Bible says all them plagues 
mentioned in Eevelation is goin’ to be added 
to you. An’ mor’n that, the Bible says the 
devil is like a roarin’ lion, but you said he was 
like Bill Davis’ old suck-egg hound. If I 
thought the devil was as ’feard of me as old 
Tige, I’d rest mighty easy in this world, I tell 
you. I could slap my hands and run him 
outen a hundred-acre field. An’ mor’n that, 
what you said wa’n’t in the Scriptur.’ I don’t 
know what Sallie was a-goin’ to say, for when 
she said that Parson Ponddnck laid whip to 
his old bone-stack, an’ went pacing over the 
hill like a greased streak of lightnin’. He 
know’d he couldn’t hold no han’ with Sallie, 
for she’s one of ’em as shear as you live. 
She’ll be at the “Flat” to-morrow, an’ she’ll 
want you to pitch into the Parson, but if I 
were you I wouldn’t pay no ’tention to him. 
No good ever comes of argufying, nohow.” 

The good advice of my host was easily kept. 
I declined answering the backwoods divine. 


A Backwoods Divine on Baptism, 195 

Yet I wondered why the Holy Spirit had never 
moved the hearts of devoted men and women 
to enter these dark valleys, bringing with them 
a purer word of life than that which prevailed. 
But God in his mysterious providence had 
sent one missionary here, and her body rests 
in the “Last Eetreat,” and as we shall see, 
she “being dead yet speaketh.” 

When I retired for the night it was to dream 
over fleeing fawns and chasing hounds. But 
little did I imagine that a deer-chase would 
soon have much to do in restoring the rights 
of Louise and ’Cinda, yet it was so. 




A NEW-FASHIONED SHIRT AND A DEER-CHASE. 

Why weep faint-hearted and forlorn, when evil comes 
to try us ? 

The fount of hope wells ever nigh ; ’twill cheer us 
with a quaff ; 

And when the gloomy phantom of despondency stands 
by us, 

Let us, in calm defiance, exorcise it with a laugh. 

Y backwoods opponent was evidently a 



XVX hydropathist, and his strictures on his 
homespun science of hydrology had at least 
wrought one beneficial result — it had exercised 
to their utmost capacity my risible functions. 
No wonder, therefore, that I slept so soundly 
after retiring that it was necessary for my 
host to enter my room about eight o’clock, 
Saturday morning, for the purpose of remind- 
ing me that I had an appointment for that day 
at the “Flat.” 

Having grown more familiar with me, 
through an association of several months, he 


( 196 ) 


A New-fashioned Shirt and a Deer-chase. 197 

not only took the liberty of entering my apart- 
ment, but, taking hold of me with vise-like 
grip, he gave my body a vigorous shake, thus 
tearing me completely away from the arms of 
Morpheus, and at the same time informing me 
that it was “ nigh onto time for to eat a bite.” 
He seemed determined not only to arouse me 
from my slumbers, but to remain with me un- 
til I was ready for the “spout.” The arrange- 
ment of my toilet was to him an item of con- 
siderable interest. While I adjusted my 
collar and cuffs he remarked: “Well, did I 
ever! I never saw a shirt before that you 
could take to pieces an’ put together ag’in 
’thout bein’ sewed. An’, would you b’lieve it, 
it’s one of them kind that opens in the back. 
I’ve hearn about them kind before. Parson 
Pondduck got hold o’ one down at the baptiz- 
in’ at Jones’s mill-pond, an’ got it on wrong. 
I tell you it caused a sight o’ merriment 
amongst the youngsters.” 

Knowing that there was a laugh in store for 
me that would shake off the last bit of drow- 
siness, I inquired how it was. 


198 


The Girl in Checks. 


“Well, you see, they liad a baptizin’ down at 
Brother Jones’s mill-pond, after preachin’ at 
Long Branch. ’Pears powerful curious that 
they name all their meetin’-houses after the 
water-courses, don’t it? But, as I was goin’ 
for to say, the parson, when he got down to 
the pond, saw that he had forgot to fetch a 
suit of clothes for to change, an’ them he had 
on were his Sunday ones; So he had to bor- 
row a suit from Billy Jones. Billy, you know, 
is always up to some prank. So off he goes to 
the house an’ fetches his Sunday shirt an’ 
pants; that was all the clothes the parson 
wanted. Billy is a powerful heavy-sot, chunky 
fellow, you know, an’ the parson is an oncom- 
monly long man. They say Billy’s shirt an’ 
pants looked a sight on him. Billy let him 
have his Sunday shirt. As I said, it was one 
he’d bought outen the store down at Greenville, 
an it opened in the back like yourn. Parson 
Pondduck, ’pears, never had seen nor hearn tell 
of them kind o’ shirts, an’ when he put it on 
he buttoned it in front. As I said, he didn’t 
have on any coat, nor galluses nuther. It 


A New-fashioned Shirt and a Deer-chase. 199 

stuck powerful close to his breast, an’ humped 
up oncommonly high on his back. .When he 
come down to the pond with Billy’s breeches 
a-comin’ ’bout to his knees, an’ that starched 
shirt-bosom a-puffin’ up on his back, they say 
he were a funny sight. They say when the 
parson would stoop down for to put ’em under 
the water it ’pear’d like he was plum disj’int- 
ed, an’ the fore part a-stickin’ so close to his 
chest made him look like he would break clean 
in two.” ^ 

And so the sight must have been an amusing 
one indeed. I do not know what further 
comment my host may have made on the par- 
son’s attire, for just then I began to adjust a 
pair of cufp-supporters, and they took his eye 
as something altogether novel. Being also a 
little stoop-shouldered, having caused it by 
carelessness relative to bodily carriage, and, 
being yet young, I had determined, if possi- 
ble, to remedy that defect in my form; hence 
I was in the act of adjusting my shoulder- 
brace when my host’s eyes dilated with large 
wonder as he remarked: “Well, I never saw 


200 


The Girl in Checks. 


so many trappin’s on one man before. Yon 
shoarly feel like Parson Pondduck looked; you 
mus’ be afeard you’ll come onj’inted.” 

I was not a little amused, I must confess, at 
my host’s remarks. But when I had completed 
my toilet, and had bathed at the spout, break- 
fast was announced; and there, I must say, I 
was considerably embarrassed as my host fa- 
cetiously declared to the family that “Our lit- 
tle preacher has got on his harness, an’ is ready 
for to pitch into Parson Pondduck.” 

As ridiculous as was this homespun sally, 
it was instrumental in causing me to lay aside 
the shoulder-brace forever, and to determine 
ever afterward to work without harness. 

After breakfast we sat awhile on the little 
back piazza, listening to hounds yelping in 
the distance. It was a deer-chase, and the 
course which the agile animal was taking 
could be distinctly traced by the sound of the 
yelping pack, as it floated out on the calm, 
clear atmosphere of that beautiful September 
morning. 

But it will prove to be a lucky chase. It 


A New-fashioned Shirt and a Deer-chase, 201 

will be instrumental in restoring rights forgot- 
ten and in setting aright wrongs that were 
deliberate and premeditated. 

There is indeed a divine special providence 
over all of God’s children. “For we know,” 
declares the great apostle to the Gentiles, 
“that all things work together for good to 
them that love God.” 

Behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow. 

Keeping watch above his own. 




A CAMP-HUNT, AND HOW IT TERMINATED. 
OTHING, perhaps, in the line of outdoor 



n sports gives more real enjoyment and 
yields more pleasurable recreation than a 
camp-hunt in the mountains. It is an old 
custom in South Carolina. Low-country men 
frequently visit the mountains, and spend 
weeks under canvas. The pure atmosphere 
of the great Appalachian chain, the savory 
venison, the delicious trout, together with the 
outdoor exercise incident to such a trip, lend 
to it many fascinations. 

A party of hunters had, at the time of which 
I write, pitched their tent in the beautiful val- 
ley extending along the base of Table Rock. 
The hounds to which we had been listening 
belonged to the persons composing this camp. 
The leading spirit of this little band of hunt- 
ers was Wilbur Legrand. He was a descend- 
ant of one among the oldest and best Huguenot 


( 202 ) 


A Camp-himt, and How It Terminated, 203 

families in Lower Carolina. He had completed 
his education a year previous to the incident 
about which I am writing. He had returned 
to his home, after receiving his diploma, just 
in time to witness the death of his father. 
That sad event left him — he being the only 
child, and his mother having died several 
years previous— sole heir to the old home- 
stead, which joined the broad fields of the un- 
fortunate Eugene Dudevant — ‘‘The Oaks.” 
Wilbur Legrand was thus left alone in the 
world, and the camp-hunt of which we have 
spoken was somewhat the result of his loneli- 
ness. He had, in company with a number of 
associates, determined to seek recreation in 
this way. 

On the morning of which we speak Wilbur 
Legrand had placed himself at the head of the 
valley, in a narrow ravine, close to a large 
spring of pure water. This was a point by 
which the deer generally passed in their flight 
from the valley to a safe retreat among the 
towering crags. It was only a few hundred 
yards from Tom Thaxton’s dwelling. The 


204 


The Girl in Checks, 


spring by which he stood was the one from 
which the Thaxton family secured drinking- 
water. 

The handsome young hunter took his stand, 
and eagerly watched for the form of the flying 
deer. The exciting yelp of the hounds came 
nearer and yet nearer. Every nerve of the 
young hunter now quivered with excitement. 
He looked steadily down the ravine, expecting 
every moment to catch sight of the large ant- 
lers of the bounding buck; but alas! just as 
the game was almost in sight the panting ani- 
mal changed its course, and the yelp of the 
hounds grew fainter and yet fainter as they 
receded toward the western side of the valley. 
Disappointed and provoked, the young hunter 
stretched at full length upon one of the moss- 
covered rocks by the spring, and listened for 
a shot from some more fortunate member of 
the party. As he lay there in a listening atti- 
tude the reaction of the nervous system pre- 
cipitated him into a dreamy reverie. He was 
aroused, however, from this semi-conscious 
state by sounds in the distance. Could it be 


A Cam 2 )-hunt, and How It Terminated, 205 

that the hounds were returning? He grasped 
his gun and sprung to his feet, but when he 
had shaken the dreamy slumber from his per- 
son he realized that the approaching sound 
came from human lips. He listened; it was 
the sweetest voice that had ever greeted his 
ears. Nearer and yet nearer it came; he stood 
spell-bound by the mellifluous symphonies. 
Now he could distinguish the air, and now the 
words: 

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ; 

O give me my lowly thatched cottage again. 

The birds singing gayly that come to my call — 

Give me them, wdth the peace of mind dearer than all. 

Home! home! sweet, sweet home ! 

There’s no place like home! there’s no place like home! 

It was the second stanza of John Howard 
Payne’s immortal song. 

Now he caught the first glimpse of the 
sweet songstress through the heavy timber and 
thick foliage on the mountain - side, down 
which she was coming. In one hand she car- 
ried a rude wooden bucket, and in the other a 
jar of milk, to be deposited in the crude old 


206 


The Girl in Checks. 


mossy spring-house. The young hunter was 
enraptured as he gazed on the lovely form 
slowly and gracefully descending the mount- 
ain-side. Her exquisite beauty was as enchant- 
ing as the sweet strains flowing from her ruby 
lips, which were taken up and rolled back 
in echoes by a score of towering mountains. 
As he looked upon the unadorned beauty of 
Louise Dunbar, alias Thaxton, clad in her 
coarse mountain garb, he spontaneously ejac- 
ulated: “Give me the pure lily from the clefts 
of the rocky mountain’s side, whose first love 
is my own.” . 

Their eyes met for the first time. The 
slight embarrassment incident to so sudden 
a meeting was soon dispelled by that grace 
and suavity of manner which love begets. 
Need I say more? Does not the reader un- 
derstand? 

We were still sitting in the little back piazza 
when Louise returned from the spring, accom- 
panied by Wilbur Legrand. She walked by 
his side, blushing at every step, while he car- 
ried in one hand the huge, double-barreled 


A Camp-hunt^ and How It Terminated, 207 

deer-gun, and in the other a pail of pure wa- 
ter from the mountain spring. The indica- 
tions were plain enough — Cupid had made in- 
curable wounds, and Wilbur Legrand would 
pluck the lily from the rocky cleft of the 
mountain-side. 

One year after the event just recorded there 
was a dual wedding in Tom Thaxton’s humble 
cabin. Legrand plucked the mountain lily; 
and George Duvall, one of Legrand’s dearest 
friends, and a companion also in that camp- 
hunt, claimed ’Cinda Houston, “one o’ the 
best o’ the ’oman kind,” as Abe Grimshaw 
would say, as his bride. 

’Cinda Houston’s property was restored 
through Louise, it having passed into her 
hands at the death of Eugene Dudevant, who 
held it by mortgage. 

Louise Legrand lives at “The Oaks,” and 
George Duvall, having purchased Wilbur Le- 
grand’s old homestead, resides there, so that 
’Cinda and Louise are near neighbors still. 

Honest Tom Thaxton and his devoted wife 
sleep in the “Last Eetreat,” under the shad- 


208 


The Girl in Checks. 


ow of the great rocks; so there are three 
graves there now. 

Two magnificent summer residences are be- 
ing built — one on the site of Sam Houston’s 
old building, overlooking the beautiful valley 
of the Oolenoi; and another on the spot which 
Tom Thaxton’s humble cabin formerly occu- 
pied, that property having been willed to Lou- 
ise by Tom Thaxton before he died. 

Methodism is the religion of these two 
homes; and now the dark mantle of ignorance 
has been lifted from the community around 
the “ Flat,” and the Kose of Sharon is bloom- 
ing on the rugged mountain-side. 

Parson Pondduck has sought the deep for- 
ests of Transylvania as the field for his po- 
lemic battles. May peace attend his efforts! 
Bight has triumphed. There is a special prov- 
idence. 


The End. 





















J 



S, 




4 


i 



\ 


*. 

v> 




p 




* 


\ 


* 




J 


-i 


/ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


□aomfifliim 




